The 69th Venice International Film Festival is traditionally held on the island of Lido, the northern part of which has long been the permanent home of this oldest film forum. In 2012, the solemn ceremony of its opening took place on August 29, and over the next 11 days, the winner of the main prize - the "Golden Lion", is to be determined. The main program of candidate films includes 18 films.
The opening film of the film festival was "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mira Nair, an Indian American who made her second film about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States. However, this picture is not included in the main competition program and will be shown as part of Fuori Сoncorso. Together with her, 24 more films were included in the out-of-competition program, including "Anton is Nearby" by Russian documentary Lyubov Arkus. In the main competition, our country is also represented - on the island of Lido will show a picture of Kirill Serebrennikov "Treason".
The first films of the competition screening will be two American films - "The Master" by Paul Thomas Anderson and "To the Admiration" by Terrence Malick. Then there will be shown two new works by a pair of masters from the east - the crime thriller "Mayhem 2" by the Japanese Takeshi Kitano and the drama about the tax collector "Pieta" by the South Korean Kim Ki-Duk. The program includes a film by another director from Asia - "The Womb" of the Filipino Brillante Mendoza.
Brian De Palma, whose work has not received awards at film festivals for a long time, is presented at the competition with the film Passion. Olivier Assayas sent to the film forum a picture "Something in the Air" about the times of student unrest in France in 1968. The program also includes the second part of Ulrich Seidl's trilogy about the crisis of Western civilization - "Paradise: Faith". The first part was shown this year at the Cannes Film Festival.
The main program also includes the films "Fill the Void" by Ram Berstein, "At Any Cost" by Ramin Bahrani, "He Was the Son" by Daniel Sipri, "A Special Day" by Francesca Comencini, "Swing Vacations" by Harmony Corin, "The Fifth Season" by Peter Brossens and Jessica Woodworth, The Sleeping Beauty by Marco Bellocchio, Superstar by Xavier Giannoli, Wellington by Valeria Sarmiento. The festival will be closed by the drama "The Man Who Laughs" by Jean-Pierre Amery, starring Gerard Depardieu.
The festival has a separate program called "Horizons" for pictures of experimental directions. It includes 18 full-length and 15 short films, including the work of Russian Alexei Balabanov "I want to too".
