The 79th Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival, opened last night with Catherine Deneuve as guest of honor and 23 films in competition.
This 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival takes place from August 31 to September 10, and will bring together icons and young shoots of the seventh art. 23 films are competing for the Golden Lion, which will be awarded on September 10, during the festival that assumes its status as a launch pad for the race to the Oscars.
Twenty years after winning the acting award for “Far from Heaven”, Julianne Moore, who walked the carpet in a sumptuous black transparent dress, was chosen to chair the jury, which includes Audrey Diwan, the French director who won the Golden Lion last year.
In the Palace of Cinema on the Lido overlooking the sea, Catherine Deneuve, guest of honor, received a Golden Lion of honor for his career. A video message from Volodymyr Zelensky was then broadcast. He called on the world of cinema “not to forget” a war that “did not last 120 minutes but for 189 days”.
The discoveries of the 7th art
After the speeches and tributes, the audience was able to see the official screening of the opening film, “White Noise” by New Yorker Noah Baumbach, adapted from a novel by writer Don DeLillo. The 52-year-old filmmaker, author of “Frances Ha” or “Marriage Story”, reunited with his favorite performers, such as his partner Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver.
The selection of this film in the opening is a new mark of recognition for Netflix, which produced it, and which offers this year no less than four films and a series at the festival. Also at Netflix, the Cuban actress Ana de Armas, noticed as a James Bond girl last year, plays Marilyn Monroe in a fictionalized biopic, signed Andrew Dominik. The film promises to be a sensation, with a feminist retelling of the life of this film icon, based on the story “Blonde”, by novelist Joyce Carol Oates.
Also eagerly awaited by moviegoers are the new films by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“The Revenant”), Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”), and Joanna Hogg, starring Tilda Swinton.
French authors are not to be outdone, from Rebecca Zlotowski to Romain Gavras, including the actor Roschdy Zem, not to mention the playwright Florian Zeller who presents “The Son”, an adaptation of one of his plays, with Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern.
Read also > THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS THE GOLDEN LION TO THE FRENCH-LEBANESE AUDREY DIWAN
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