Venice Set to Start With Oscar Hopefuls, Smattering of Stars, and Italian Politics Looming on the Lido

With three competition titles across the last four editions, no contemporary filmmaker has been more present on the Venice Lido than director Michel Franco. 

After just being officially confirmed for a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement the day before, the cast of Memory hit the Venice Film Festival red carpet Friday night. Michel Franco’s movie, starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, was greeted with a seven-minute ovation during its world premiere inside the Sala Grande.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Luca Guadagnino, whose Zendaya-starrer “Challengers” was pulled as Venice Film Festival opener due to complications from the SAG-AFTRA strike, is on the Lido wearing his producer hat on several films. One, especially close to his heart, is animation short “The Meatseller” by debuting director Margherita Giusti.

Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard are here in Venice today for the world premiere of Michel Franco’s Memory, which on Thursday was officially confirmed for an interim agreement. At the press conference today, Chastain, sporting a SAG-AFTRA On Strike t-shirt, was asked if she had considered not attending amid the ongoing labor action. She began by saying, “Yes, I was incredibly nervous to be here today, and actually there are some people on my team who advised me against it.” However, she opted to come in support of her union.

EXCLUSIVE: It’s not a given that talent will attend premieres if their movie gets an interim agreement but we can confirm that Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard will be on hand to spice up the premieres of new movie Memory both tomorrow in Venice and next week in Toronto.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian hotshot Pietro Castellitto is in competition in Venice with his second feature “Enea,” in which he also stars as the titular character, a young Roman sushi restaurant owner and cocaine dealer whose best friend Valentino just got his license as an airplane pilot. There is a lot going on in this fresh and frenzied film lensed by ace cinematographer Radek Ladczuk (“The Babadook”). “Enea” is produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s the Apartment, which is a Fremantle company, and Luca Guadagnino’s Frenesy.

Director Sofia Coppola’s biopic “Priscilla” made its debut at the Venice International Film Festival, where Coppola was joined by the film’s subject, Priscilla Presley, and stars Cailee Spaeny (who plays Priscilla Presley) and Jacob Elordi (Elvis Presley).

It surprised no one earlier this year when Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross officially came on board to score David Fincher‘s “The Killer.” After all, the pair have scored all of Fincher’s films since 2010’s “The Social Network.” But it surprised audiences at the movie’s world premiere in Venice last weekend when Reznor & Ross’ work didn’t feature prominently in “The Killer” at all.

Priscilla Presley went through an emotional experience as she watched “Priscilla,” the new film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Priscilla Presley’s emotional reaction to Sofia Coppola’s film: ‘Only being 14, you look back and look ‘Why me?’’Priscilla Presley knew something was ‘not right’ days before Lisa Marie’s death: ‘I still can’t believe it’Premiering in Venice over the past week, “Priscilla” is based on the memoir “Elvis and Me,” written by herself and follows Presley’s life and romance with Elvis. “It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you, about your life, about your love,” said Presley.

The tears flowed for Priscilla Presley following the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s biopic, “Priscilla”, in Venice on Monday.

The devil is in the details. Pink-nailed toes scrunching on a pink carpet; a packet of false eyelashes; piles of chips in a Vegas casino; the pills. Always the pills: squeezed in a palm that opens to reveal its little white prize; lined up in bottles on the bedside table; slipped into a pocket on the way to school. “Maybe the pills are too much,” ventures Priscilla Beaulieu to her boyfriend Elvis Presley, after one of his flares of temper where she just manages to dodge his fist. “I have doctors looking after me,” he growls. “I don’t need a second opinion.”

The most powerful aspect of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” premiering in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is in the title: to focus on Priscilla Presley, née Wagner, formerly Beaulieu, is to show a side of a marriage and of the King himself less familiar than and in some ways different from the romantic popular legend. But Coppola’s film does much more than simply show us the facts of how a fourteen-year-old girl gets to become the girlfriend and then wife of one of the biggest artists of all time.

EXCLUSIVE: It’s a scorching 90 degrees in Rome at the end of July, but producer Lorenzo Mieli isn’t breaking a sweat.

The question of whether or not technology has killed the classic crime thriller has popped in and out of the discourse as the years saw pocket watches morph into sci-fi-looking gadgets capable of getting one both dinner and a first-class ticket to Dubai in the space of a couple of minutes.

Before “Maestro” plunges into the sharp monochrome of its first chapter, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein relays to a camera crew how he can still feel the presence of his wife within the walls and gardens of their beautiful countryside manor. “I miss her so much,” he says, the passage of time denounced by the sprawling maze of wrinkles that frames his youthful blue eyes.

When Andy Kaufman passed away in May 1984, it was the final full stop in a life that seemed to be endlessly self-regenerating. Or was it? Rumors that this was another of his bizarre stunts were rife at the time, so much so that one of the mourners at the comedian’s funeral poked the body that lay in the casket to see if it would move.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Gap-Financing Market is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year with record-breaking attendance and impressive new figures on the projects that the core component of Venice’s industry side has helped bring to the big screen. All told, over the span of a decade, “We have had 370 films (including immersive) from 70 countries and 80% of them have been completed within six months after the festival,” says Pascal Diot who heads the Venice Production Bridge, as the Lido’s market is known.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent France’s UFO Distribution has acquired French rights to Venice Horizons entry “An Endless Sunday” by first-time Italian director Alain Parroni from Fandango Sales. The film will segue from Venice to Toronto where it screens in the fest’s Discovery section.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari received a 7 1/2-minute standing ovation Thursday night after the lights went up on the film’s world premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival.

The Venice Film Festival is now underway, albeit without a lot of actors on the Lido thanks to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. But Variety reports that “Ferrari” star Adam Driver is at the festival to support Michael Mann‘s latest film (as it’s not part of the AMPTP), and he didn’t hold back about certain companies refusing to meet guild demands.