65th Venice International Film Festival

The festival opened on August 27, 2008, with the highly anticipated film directed by the Coen brothers, Burn After Reading. Burn is not running in the official competition and thus is ineligible to win any prizes, but reaction in Venice will indicate whether Joel and Ethan Coen can repeat their success of 2008 with the Academy Award-winning Venice entry, No Country For Old Men.[4]

Unlike the Cannes Film Festival, American filmmakers have only twice won the coveted prize at Venice (with the majority of prizes going to European or Asian filmmakers over the past 65 years). It is also famine for British films, as none were selected for competition in this year's festival.[5] Despite the dearth of English-speaking films, several films at the fest are likely to make a splash at this year's Oscars in Hollywood. A trend has been that several films launched in Venice have gone on to garner multiple Academy Award nominations. In 2005, Taiwan-born director Ang Lee's film, Brokeback Mountain earned its director a Best Director Oscar. Lee has won the top prize at Venice twice in the past few years.[4][6]

The glamour of the Venice Film Festival (attended by many high-profile stars) as well as the link with the upcoming Academy Awards has helped raise the Venice Film Festival's profile. Nonetheless, the event has a long-established reputation for showcasing emerging cinema, including films from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, and this year's lineup proves the same.[7]

Festival organizers have announced that the festival's shorts competition will begin on September 1 with Natalie Portman's directorial debut, Eve. Rising Russian star Kseniya Rappoport will also host the opening and closing ceremonies.[8]

German independent film director Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire) will head the Venice film jury.[9]

According to the International Herald Tribune, the Venice Film Festival will not be without its drama if the water-taxi drivers have any say:

"On the eve of the festival, Venice's water-taxi drivers were threatening to go on strike... The city's deputy mayor, Michele Vianello, at first responded in "make-my-day" mode, telling them to go right ahead, a sentiment shared by most of Venice's inhabitants, the vast majority of whom use public water buses and would only consider taking one of these astronomically expensive private conveyances for weddings, funerals, or if they won the lottery. Vianello subsequently declared the strike illegal, but if it goes ahead, ordinary festivalgoers may find themselves traveling with the stars (the Lido can only be reached by boat)."[5]

The festival will close on September 6, 2008.[9]

This year's Venice Film Festival's film selections had been widely criticized as being among the weakest in years, with some publications even describing it as the "worst ever".[10][11] Later showings made It improve from bad to better,[12][13] but it might have been too late.[14]

The 65th Venice International Film Festival will be dedicated to the late Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. Chahine who died recently at age 82, was a notable in post-war Arab cinema.[9] Festival director Marco Mueller said, "Who else could have succeeded in mixing the philosopher Averroes with Fred Astaire? That's what cinema should be about", Mueller said, referring to Chahine's film "Destiny".[15]

Of the 52 films selected to screen at this year's Venice Mostra, only 21 will be competing for the Golden Lion top prize.[15]

Most of the films at Venice will be world premieres, including the "things that go boom" psychological thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker. The film deals with the physical and emotional strains faced by EOD bomb squads in Iraq.[7] Also premiering at the festival is home-grown favorite Birdwatcher directed by Italy's own Marco Bechis. Other strong contenders for the coveted Golden Lion award are the Darren Aronofsky directed film, The Wrestler, and director Barbet Schroeder's entry, L'Inju: la Bete dans l'Ombre.[9]

With no British pictures and a diminished U.S. presence, the Venice Film Festival will focus on Italian and Japanese cinema with four films from each country, including Oscar-winning animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki's latest, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.[16]

European films are also set to dominate the festival, due in part to the American Writer's Guild strike and the effects of the slow down in the film pipeline. Other theories for the lack of American films are the U.S. economy (with dollar's slump vs. the euro), and Hollywood studio belt-tightening.[16] The major U.S. studios have effectively gobbled up all the small independent labels, then went on to make poor development and/or marketing decisions causing the inevitable shuttering or downsizing of these same "independent" labels. Former "indies" such as Warner Independent, New Line and Paramount Vantage are ghosts of the past. The lucrative temptation for studios to bust their budgets with big tent pole films has also meant the hard squeeze on less expensive, but the more challenging-to-market independent films. Risk-averse U.S. majors are seemingly no longer as willing to foot the bill for innovative films made for grownups. Industry trade magazines have pronounced this both as a death and/or a subsequent potential rebirth or "reboot" for independent filmmaking.[17]

"We look for the vitality of cinema where it is hidden, be it in popular works or auteur cinema; it makes no difference to us", festival director Marco Mueller says. Muller added, "The choices I made this year reconfirm an identity for the festival, but I definitely want Venice to stay pluralistic and contradictory." The show this year is packed with Japanese and French titles, and Mueller was compelled to honor domestic films, unfurling the largest Italian contingent on the Lido in ages.[18]

African cinema is also well repped with Ethiopian director Haile Gerima's Teza and Algerian helmer Tariq Teguia is screening Inland.[18]

Asia could win the Golden Lion for best film for the fourth year running. Leading the Japanese line-up is Akires to kame (Achilles and the Tortoise) directed by Takeshi Kitano. Kitano is a favored son in Venice, having already won the 1997 Leone d'Oro for Hana-bi (Fireworks) and who was awarded a special prize for his direction of Zatoichi in 2003.[4]

Films being screen out of competition include 35 Rums by French director Claire Denis, Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami's film, Shirin and an autobiographical documentary by Belgium-born director Agnès Varda.[9]

The "record" for the longest film at this festival (or maybe any) goes to Philippine director Lav Diaz's Melancholia, with a running time of some seven-and-a-half hours, and which is included in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section.[7]

A highlight of this year's Italian retrospective is a restored version of Federico Fellini's 1952 comedy The White Sheik with forty minutes of newly discovered footage.[19]

The international juries of the 65th Venice International Film Festival were composed as follows:[20]

Main Competition (Venezia 65)

• Wim Wenders, German filmmaker, playwright, author and photographer (Jury President)
• Yuri Arabov, Russian screenwriter, writer, poet and educator
• Valeria Golino, Italian actress and director
• Douglas Gordon, Scottish artist
• John Landis, American director, screenwriter, actor and producer
• Lucrecia Martel, Argentine director, screenwriter, and producer
• Johnnie To, Hong Kong director and producer

Horizons (Orizzonti)

• Chantal Akerman, Belgian director, artist and professor of film (President)
• Nicole Brenez, French historian, theoretician and professor of cinema
• Barbara Cupisti, Italian documentary director and actress
• José Luis Guerín, Spanish filmmaker and educator
• Veiko Õunpuu, Estonian film director and screenwriter

Opera Prima ("Luigi de Laurentiis" Award for a Debut Film)

• Abdellatif Kechiche, Tunisian-French actor, director and screenwriter (President)
• Alice Braga, Brazilian actress
• Gregory Jacobs, American director, producer and screenwriter
• Donald Ranvaud, British producer and film journalist
• Heidrun Schleef, Italian screenwriter and producer

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 65th Venice International Film Festival.

• Official website
• Venice Film Festival 2008 Awards on IMDb