Venice Film Festival to Pay Tribute to Gina Lollobrigida With Orson Welles Short at Pre-Opening Event

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Wes Anderson will be honored at the 80th Venice Film Festival, which runs Aug. 30-Sept. 9.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Nicole Morganti, Amazon Studios head of Italian originals, is being promoted by the streamer to the newly expanded role of head of local originals for Southern Europe encompassing Italy, France and Spain. Morganti, who has over 20 years of experience in the Italian entertainment industry, joined Amazon Studios as head of unscripted originals for Italy in February 2019 from her previously held position of Discovery Italy’s VP of talent and productions.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agent Pluto Film has boarded “Forever-Forever” (“Nazavzhdy-Nazavzhdy”), Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Buryachkova’s feature directing debut, ahead of its world premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra competition. After transferring from a downtown high school, Tonia (Alina Cheban) befriends a group of badass youngsters, trying to find protection from the people from her past and a place she truly belongs. They spend time together, roaming around Kyiv’s post-socialist suburbs, having fun and getting in trouble.

While SAG-affiliated actors may not be on the Lido for the Venice Film Festival at the end of the summer, two filmmakers with less than stellar reputations will be: Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. Venice creative director Albert Barbera said he doesn’t “see where the issue is” for both filmmakers bring their new films to the festival, albeit out of competition.

It’s been three years since Woody Allen‘s last film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” which came and went without much fanfare, even with the COVID-19 pandemic going on. And at age 87, many didn’t expect Allen to keep working post-pandemic.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent An underhanded move by members of Italy’s right-wing government to try and take over the management of Rome’s Centro Sperimentale Film School is prompting an uproar by its students and a strong show of support from the country’s top directors. Earlier this week, students of the Centro Sperimentale — which is the oldest film school in the world, and among the finest — staged a demonstration in front of the country’s parliament just as a piece of legislation that would change the school’s management was swiftly being approved by a parliamentary committee.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent French director Élise Girard’s “Sidonie in Japan” starring Isabelle Huppert as a French writer mourning her husband’s death while on a book tour of Japan, is among titles set to launch from the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori. The section, also known as Venice Days, has unveiled its lineup comprising ten titles world premiering in competition – six of which first works – and films in other sections all displaying a wide range of genres and visual styles, but tied together by “A common discourse,” said the section’s artistic director Gaia Furrer.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is refusing to row back on his decision to invite controversial movie-biz bigwigs Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson to the late summer event, which will take place despite the potential disruption by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. “Luc Besson has been recently fully cleared of any accusations. Woody Allen went under legal scrutiny twice at the end of the ’90s and was absolved,” Barbera said in a new interview with Variety.

The Venice Film Festival on Tuesday released a star-studded and A-list heavy lineup of films that will debut at the 2023 Biennale, including the films vying for this year’s Golden Lion. This was done despite the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers strike.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is in a good mood after Tuesday’s lineup announcement managed to stave off the impact of the SAG-AFTRA strike, something which could have been “devastating” to the event, he says. In the end, the only U.S. film that skipped the Lido is Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya-starrer “Challengers,” which Barbera says was against Guadagnino’s wishes.

The Venice Film Festival revealed the lineup for its 80th edition Tuesday morning, and its Official Competition featured works by five women filmmakers, including Ava DuVernay, who makes history as the first African American woman in selection.

Refresh for latest…: Venice Film Festival chief Alberto Barbera is announcing the lineup for the event’s 80th edition this morning. We’ll be updating the list as the films are revealed, so check back for more below. You can also watch the livestream here.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The 80th Venice Film Festival is announcing its lineup on Tuesday from the Italian city, where artistic director Alberto Barbera and La Biennale president Roberto Cicutto are holding a press conference. The Lido’s only previously announced titles in the main selection are the opener, Italian director Edoardo De Angelis’ “Comandante” — a lavish anti-war epic featuring local star Pierfrancesco Favino as a heroic Sicilian World War II naval officer — and the closer, Netflix’s survival thriller “Society of the Snow” by Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona. “Comandante” replaced Luca Guadagnino’s sexy sports comedy “Challengers,” starring Zendaya, which had previously been set as the fest’s buzzy opener but was pulled due to promotional complications prompted by the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The Venice Film Festival will announce the lineup for its 80th edition Tuesday at 11 a.m. European time (3 a.m. PT/6 a.m. ET). Venice Artistic Director Alberto Barbera will be joined by Biennale President Roberto Cicutto to reveal this year’s titles.

Venice International Film Festival has announced which film will be closing the event in September.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s “Society of the Snow,” a reconstruction of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes that forced survivors to take extreme measures, including cannibalism, has been set as the Venice Film Festival’s closing film. The deeply immersive Spanish-language saga is a Netflix original film shot in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada, mainland Spain’s highest mountain range, using a 300-person crew. “Society of the Snow” will world premiere on the Lido out-of-competition on Sept. 9th. Its official screening will be held in the Palazzo del Cinema after the awards ceremony. In 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to bring Montevideo’s Old Christians Rugby Club team to Chile, crashed at an altitude of 11,712 feet in the Andes.  Of its 45 passengers – which consisted mostly of the rugby team, friends and family – 29 survived. Without food, the survivors, who belonged to Uruguay’s elite, were forced to eat the flesh of the deceased to stay alive. 19 survived an avalanche. 72 days after the crash, 16 finally made it out alive. 

Fans are going to have to a wait a few more months before Zendaya‘s next movie hits theaters.

Zendaya tennis drama Challengers has become a high-profile casualty of the SAG-AFTRA strike with confirmation that its Venice Film Festival world premiere has been cancelled.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday. “The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The 80th Venice Film Festival has revealed its selection of projects for Venice Immersive, the XR-Extended Reality section of the festival, which runs Aug. 30 – Sept. 9. The program will include VR experience “Wallace & Gromit in the Grand Getaway” and a Fatboy Slim project. Venice Immersive is devoted to immersive media and includes all XR means of creative expression: 360° videos and XR works of any length, including installations and virtual worlds. The program, which will take place on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, will present 44 projects from 25 countries, and 24 works in the Worlds Gallery section. It will comprise: