It’s a sure sign that summer in the northern hemisphere is over and the awards season is around the corner – the feast of autumn film festivals.
The 72nd Venice Film Festival opened on Wednesday, followed later this month by movie extravaganzas in Toronto, Telluride and New York. As well as celebrating the best of global cinema, the festivals battle one another to snag the biggest stars and hottest awards prospects.
Venice, the oldest of the bunch, brings 11 days of red carpets, flashbulbs, parties and premieres to the canal-crossed Italian city.
Here are highlights, trends and themes to look out for:
Venice’s opening slot has developed a formidable hit-making reputation. In 2013, it sent the space saga Gravity into orbit, and on to seven Academy Awards.
Last year’s opener, the midlife crisis comedy Birdman, scooped four Oscars, including best picture, and revived Michael Keaton’s career.
This year’s festival opened with Baltasar Kormakur’s thriller Everest, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robin Wright, Emily Watson and Jason Clarke in the fact-based story of peril on the world’s highest peak. Producers’ hopes are as high as a Himalayan summit.
Festival director Alberto Barbera said that the opening film had needed to strike a balance between artistry and audience-pleasing.
“We need to find a film which is at the same time spectacular, with a lot of emotion (and) good characters the audience can relate to.”
Some of Hollywood’s biggest names will be walking the red carpet on Venice’s Lido island – and hoping it’s a rehearsal for Oscar night.
Among potential prize contenders are Johnny Depp, all but unrecognisable as a Boston mobster in Scott Cooper’s Black Mass; Eddie Redmayne transformed into a transgender woman in Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl; and Idris Elba as an African warlord in Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation.
The combination of Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Ralph Fiennes could make waves in Luca Guadagnino’s drama A Bigger Splash, while Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult find love in a dangerous time in Drake Doremus’ futuristic feature Equals.
Keaton returns alongside Mark Ruffalo and Stanley Tucci in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, about Boston Globe journalists investigating sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Venice is offering up meaty fare from global auteurs among the 21 films that Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and his jury will consider for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion.
Amos Gitai depicts the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Rabin, The Last Day, while Russia’s Aleksandr Sokurov tells the story of the Louvre museum – and of Europe – in Francofonia and Italy’s Marco Bellocchio bites into the vampire-themed Blood of My Blood.
Among the quirkier-sounding offerings are Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s animated feature Anomalisa and musician Laurie Anderson’s canine-themed feature debut Heart of a Dog.
Tragic and transformative real-life events loom large in the festival’s strong slate of documentaries.
Zhao Liang’s Golden Lion contender Behemoth shows giant mines gouging the Chinese steppe, while Evgeny Afineevsky’s Winter On Fire charts the mass demonstrations that toppled the Ukraine government in 2014. Amy Berg’s Janis traces the short, sensational life of singer Janis Joplin.
ANA-AP