62nd Venice International Film Festival opens today and runs from 31st August till 10th September 2005.
For 2005, the director, Marco Müller, presents an official selection of about 60 films. This was the line already proposed by Müller after the last Festival and approved by the Biennale's Board on 9th February.

"We have decided to render the programme more legible", explained Müller, "in order to avoid any confusion between different rich and complex sections." Thus, the Festival will offer three main sections: Competition, Out of Competition and Orizzonti. The section dedicated to digital cinema and the Mezzanotte section, reserved for more spectacular films, will be absorbed into the others.

On the one side "the digital films will cross all the sections", announced the Festival director, and on the other, the nocturnal, 'adrenaline-charged' program will join the Out of Competition section and gala events; in other words, those with the greatest appeal. Finally, the Orizzonti section will include an area dedicated to documentaries (Orizzonti doc.), with seven films lasting over 60 minutes and closer in form to fiction.

These principal sections will be flanked again this year by the Critics' Week and the Giornate degli autori-Venice Days, as well as a retrospective section dedicated to the Secret History of Asian Cinema.

The festival opener out of competition screening with Seven Swords by Tsui Hark
starring Donnie Yen, Leon Lai, Charlie Young, Sun Honglei, Lu Yi, Kim so Yeun, Kar-Leung Lau.
Seven warriors come together to protect a village from a diabolical General.
In the early 1600's, the Manchurians have taken over sovereignty of China and established the Ching Dynasty. While many nationalist revolts still brew within the martial artists' community, the newly set-up government immediately imposes a Martial Arts Ban, forbidding the practice of martial arts altogether in order to gain control and order. Wind Fire (Sun Hong-Lei), a surrendered military official from the previous dynasty, sees this as an opportunity to make a fortune for himself by helping to execute the new law. Greedy, cruel, and immoral, Wind Fire ravages the North-western China, and his next goal is to attack the final frontier, Martial Village. Fu Qingzhu, a retired executioner from the previous dynasty, feels the need to put a stop to this brutality and sets out to save Bowei Fortress. He brings Wu Yuanyin and Han Zhiban from the village with him to Mount Heaven to seek help from Master Shadow-Glow, a hermit who is a master of swords and leads a group of disciples of great swordsmanship.

Master Shadow-Glow agrees to help, and orders four of his best disciples to go. Together with Chu Zhaonan, Yang Yunchong, Mulong, and Xin Longzi, the SEVEN SWORDS is formed and their heroic journey begins. As they lead the entire village to the road of a safer place, they begin to encounter mysterious confusion. Food and water is poisoned, and trails of escape are marked with signs leading the enemy to them. They soon realize that there is an undercover spy, and the SEVEN SWORDS must identify him/her before Wind Fire's army gets to them. Between this narrow gap of life and death, the situation is further complicated by the blossoms of love.
Bruno Chatelin