69TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: Golden Lion for Best Film to Pieta by KIM Ki-duk
69TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: Silver Lion for the Best Director to The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson (Philip Seymour Hoffman collects award)
69TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: Special Jury Prize to Paradies: Glaube by Ulrich Seidl
69TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: Coppa Volpi for Best Actress to Hadas Yaron
69TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best ...
“It is now established that the main function of a festival is to choose what we can and must see from among the huge blind mass of production”. Far from wishing to refute this claim, which may well be true, I feel I must add a few comments. Not marginal comments, however, if it is true that one of the reasons that led me to return to serving the Venice Film Festival, turns its gaze - in cross-eyed fashion - in a different direction. Nor am I referring to what's left of the f...
New feature films in the three sections
50, all world premieres
Venezia 69: 17 (+ 1 film to be announced)
Out of Competition: 15 (+ 9 documentaries, special events)
Orizzonti: 18 (+ 15 short films)
Restored Films
Retrospective “80!”
10 restored feature films
Retrospective “Venezia Classici”
19 restored feature films
+ 9 documentaries
Number of ...
VENEZIA 69 WINNERS
GOLDEN LION for Best Film to PIETA by Kim Ki-duk (Republic of Korea)
SILVER LION for Best Director to THE MASTER by Paul Thomas Anderson (USA)
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to Paradies: Glaube by Ulrich Seidl (Austria, Germany, France)
COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor to ...
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the new film directed by Mira Nair, will be the opening film at the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September 2012), directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by la Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher and presented by Doha Film Institute.
Based on the best-selling novel of the same title, translated into 25 languages, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a...
Marina Abramovic, Laetitia Casta, Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Ari Folman, Matteo Garrone, Ursula Meier, Samantha Morton, Pablo Trapero to form the Venezia 69 International Jury
chaired by Michael Mann
The selection has been made for the members of the International Jury for the Competition at the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September 2012), with American director Michael Mann as president.
The decision was made by the Boa...
Italian animator, director and illustrator Simone Massi (who was awarded the 2012 David di Donatello for Best Short Film), is the author of the new opening sequence of the 69th Venice International Film Festival (August 29 - September 8, 2012), directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta.
The new opening sequence (30 seconds obtained from 300 hand-made drawings that hint at Fellini, Angelopoulos, Wenders, Olmi, Tarkovsky, and Dovženko) wi...
Not long after the debut of Jonathan Demme’s latest film, I’M CAROLYN PARKER: THE GOOD, THE MAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (2011), at the 68th Venice Film Festival, I interviewed Carolyn Parker’s daughter Kyrah Julian, who stars in the documentary and who attended Venice with Demme. Kyrah has been working with Demme since he started the documentary in 2006. Demme met the strong and outspoken Carolyn Parker in 2006 when she complained to the New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin about the neglect of the Nin...
Olga Dykhovichnaya (Marina) Sergei Borisov (Andrei)TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (2011) held its world premier at 68th La Biennale in Venice, North American premier at TIFF in Toronto, Nordic premier in Reykjavik at RIFF and now travels next to BFI London. This was indeed the welcome surprise of the Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF) this year. Newcomer Director/Writer/Producer Angelina Nikonova and Writer/Producer/Actress Olga Dykhovichnaya (Marina) graced the festival with their presence in it...
photo from Venice poster at La Biennale, 68.This past week I attended the 8th annual Reykjavik Film Festival (RIFF) after going nonstop from Venice La Biennale, then to TIFF and then to RIFF. I was tired of course but so anxious to catch up on the films that I had missed at the former festivals that appeared also in Iceland. One of these films was one that had received a great buzz in Venice, a lyrica...
At the 68th Venice Film Festival, Belgian director Nicolas Provost held his world premier for his first feature film THE INVADER (2011). He immediately after traveled to Toronto for TIFF 2011 where he held his North American premier and where we held our interview.THE INVADER is an intense and arresting arthouse dramatic thriller about an African immigrant, AMADOU (played hauntingly by actor Isaka Sawadogo) who travels to Belgium for a new and hopefully better life. While finding himself ...
“O Le Tulafale” (The Orator, 2011) is the first film to come out of Samoa and was shot on Upolu in Samoa. It premiered in the 'Orizzonti' section at the 68th Venice Film Festival.
"Saili (Fiaula Sanote), an unassuming villager and taro farmer, lives happily with his beautiful wife Vaaiga and her teenage daughter Litia. Their existence, whilst happy and peaceful; is unconventional. Vaaiga has been banished from her ancestral village for many years. Saili faces ...
film still of 'Faust' (2011)Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's FAUST (2011) held its world premier in Venice at the 68th Venice Film Festival this year taking the coveted Golden Lion prize for best picture. It then went on to screen its North American premier at TIFF in Toronto and has now continued its round to Iceland at the Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF). Based on the German myth of the same name, this unusual masterpiece film proves that it is not star power names of act...
To commemorate one of the world's oldest and most respected festivals during this 68th Venice International Film Festival, I present you with an in-depth interview with one of the prestigious Golden Lion winners for Best Director, Milcho Manchevski, who won the award in 1994 for his epic masterpiece BEFORE THE RAIN (1994). This interview has a story. We began it in the gardens of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Aruba during the 2nd annual AIFF in June, continued in Sarajevo during the 17th annual...
Formerly known as Expresion en Corto, the Guanajuato International Film Festival was held from July 21 – 31 in San Miguel de Allende and the state capital Guanajuato. It has remained the largest international Mexican film festival with more than 3000 submissions from about 10o countries presenting in its final program 350 productions. The festival still receives most of its funding from the state of Guanajuato and other public agencies offering screenings, conferences, and other festival a...
A DANGEROUS METHOD (2011) stars Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel and was filmed in multiple locations including Vienna, Zürich, Konstanz, Cologne and Berlin. The film takes place during World War I and focuses on the well known historical conflict between two of some of the greatest thinkers of modern science- Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung. In the film, their main subject of conflict rests on a woman, Sabina Spielrein (played by Keira Knightle...
The first part of the HBO TV series MILDRED PIERCE (2011) screened in the Sala Grande today in Venice during the 68th Venice Film Festival, out of competition. Based on the novel of the same name by writer James M. Cain, director Todd Haynes directs its second adaptation after the 1945 version which starred Joan Crawford. Todd Haynes' adaptation has been nominated for several Emmy Awards (still pending), despite the bland reception from critics that the 1945 film noir version was bette...
La Biennale President: Paolo Baratta and the festival artisitic Director Marco Muller introduce the festival's highlights.
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Press conference of "W.E." by Madonna.
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Tonight, September 01, 2011, will mark the world premier of Roman Polanski's latest film, CARNAGE (2011) at the 68th Venice Film Festival. Based on the play 'God of Carnage' by French playwright Yasmina Reza, the film is written and directed by Roman Polanski and stars Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly. The four characters will meet after a fight between their sons at school and will spin off from there into a quirky and original black comedy. The film will play...
