Venice International Film Festival 2007
The 64th Venice International Film Festival ( 64th Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica ) took place from August 29 to September 8, 2007. The world's oldest film festival , which, alongside the Cannes International Film Festival and the Berlinale, is also one of the most important, was opened with Joe Wright's apology . The most important of the five sections of the festival was the international competition, in which 23 films competed for the Golden Lion .
That award eventually went to Taiwanese director Ang Lee for the thriller Danger and Desire . In 2007, two Golden Lions were awarded as honorary awards. Bernardo Bertolucci received an award on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the festival and Tim Burton was awarded the Golden Lion for his life's work.
competition
jury
Because the festival celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007, the seven-member jury consisted exclusively of directors. The Chinese director Zhang Yimou , who won the Golden Lion twice (1992 and 1998), chaired the jury.
Zhang was supported by Catherine Breillat from France , Jane Campion from New Zealand , Alejandro González Iñárritu from Mexico , Emanuele Crialese and Ferzan Özpetek from Italy and Paul Verhoeven from the Netherlands .
Movies
As in previous years, most of the 23 feature films in the international competition were in English. Eight films were produced in the United States and four in the United Kingdom. All participating directors were men. All 23 films celebrated their world premieres in Venice.
In addition to the opening film Atonement of the British Joe Wright with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy , Ken Loach was also represented with his film It's a Free World for the United Kingdom. All British films in competition except apology emerged as co-productions, including Kenneth Branagh's one murder for 2 , a remake of the film Sleuth by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1972. Peter Greenaway filmed with Nightwatching the life of Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn , with Martin Freeman in the lead role.
Brian De Palma dealt critically with the Iraq war in his film Redacted , while Paul Haggis talks about the investigation into the murder of a young man who served as a soldier in Iraq in In the Valley of Elah . Tony Gilroy presented the political thriller Michael Clayton with George Clooney in the title role in Venice . In I'm Not There , directed by Todd Haynes , six actors (including Heath Ledger , Christian Bale , Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett ) embody various aspects of the life of folk singer Bob Dylan . In Andrew Dominik's western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , Brad Pitt plays the main character and in Darjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson , Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody as well as Bill Murray can be seen.
Italian films made up about a fifth of international competition. In addition to Andrea Porporati and Vincenzo Marra , Paolo Franchi is also submitting a film for the competition. Two other films are not filmed in Italian, but are co-productions: Ken Loach's It's a Free World ... and Éric Rohmer's Les Amours d'Astrée et Céladon . Ken Loach's film is the only film in the competition that a German-speaking country co-produced. German-language films are completely absent.
Youssef Chahine takes a look at police brutality in his film Heya fawda . This film was the first Egyptian film to compete for the Golden Lion in 25 years. The last time Egypt was represented by Chahine was when he took part in 1982 with Hadduta Massrijja - An Egyptian Story . Nikita Michalkow released the only Russian film at age 12 . This film was Michalkov's first directorial work since his The Barber of Siberia in 1998. In the French contribution Couscous with Fish , Abdellatif Kechiche tells of a poor immigrant family in France.
Four Asian films completed the competition. Two of them - Lee Kang Sheng's Bangbang wo aishen and Ang Lee's Danger and Desire - were made in Taiwan. Ang Lee released his first Chinese-language film since 2001 with this spy drama starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai . The director Jiang Wen himself played the leading role in his film Taiyang zhaochang shenqi , while the famous American director Quentin Tarantino played it in Sukiyaki Western Django by the Japanese Takashi Miike took over. The Hong Kong police thriller Mad Detective by Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai started as a “surprise film”, whose participation in the competition was only announced on the day of the screening .
Award winners
The Golden Lion for Best Picture went to Ang Lee for Danger and Desire . Lee was honored for the second time within a few years with this most important award of the festival; In 2005 he won the Golden Lion with his English-language Brokeback Mountain .
Other awards:
- Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize: Todd Haynes for I'm Not There and Abdellatif Kechiche for Couscous with Fish
- Silver Lion - Best Director: Brian De Palma for Redacted
- Coppa Volpi - Best Actor: Brad Pitt for The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford
- Coppa Volpi - Best Actress: Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There
- Marcello Mastroianni Prize - Best Young Actor: Hafsia Herzi for couscous with fish
- Osella - Best technical achievement: Rodrigo Prieto for his performance as a cameraman in danger and desire
- Osella - Best Screenplay: Paul Laverty for It's a Free World
- Special lion: Nikita Michalkow for his complete works
Orizzonti
With the Orizzonti (German: “Horizonte”) section, the “new ways of cinema” are to be mapped. Orizzonti in turn consists of a section for fictional films and one for documentaries . The Japanese director Shinji Aoyama opened the section with his film Sad Vacation . Graduating films were Tonino De Bernardi's Médée Miracle with Isabelle Huppert in the leading role in the fictional section and Lav Diaz ' Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto in the documentary section.
An international jury selected the winners of the Orizzonti Prize for Fictional Films and the Orizzonti Doc Prize for Documentary Films. This jury was chaired by the American independent filmmaker Gregg Araki . At his side:
- Frederick Wiseman , American documentary filmmaker
- Hala Alabdalla Yakoub , Syrian director and film producer
- Giorgia Fiorio , Italian photographer, musician and filmmaker
- Ulrich Gregor , German film historian
While the Orizzonti Prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, went to Estonian Veiko Õunpuu for Sügisball ( autumn ball ), the jury awarded the Orizzonti Doc Prize to the Chinese Jia Zhangke , the winner of the Golden Lion last year, for Wuyong . Lav Diaz's Filipino film Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto received a special mention .
Fictional films
| Movie title | Director | Country of production |
|---|---|---|
| Cochochi | Laura Amelia Guzman , Israel Cardenas | Mexico |
| Exodus | Penny Woolcock | United Kingdom |
| Geomen tangyi sonyeo oi | Jeon Soo-il | South Korea, France |
| L'Histoire de Richard O. | Damien Odoul | France |
| Sometimes nascida | João Canijo | Portugal |
| Médée Miracle | Tonino De Bernardi | Italy, France |
| Sad Vacation | Shinji Aoyama | Japan |
| Searchers 2.0 | Alex Cox | United States |
| The silence before Bach | Pere Portabella | Spain |
| Sügisball | Veiko Õunpuu | Estonia |
| Xiaoshuo | Lü Yue | People's Republic of China |
Documentaries
| Movie title | Director | Country of production |
|---|---|---|
| L'Aimée | Arnaud Desplechin | France |
| Anabazys | Joel Pizzini , Paloma Rocha | Brazil |
| Andarilho | Cao Guimarães | Brazil |
| Berlin | Julian Schnabel | United States |
| Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto | Lav Diaz | Philippines |
| Madri | Barbara Cupisti | Italy |
| Man from Plains | Jonathan Demme | United States |
| Il passaggio della linea | Pietro Marcello | Italy |
| San | You shark | People's Republic of China |
| dust | Hartmut Bitomsky | Germany |
| Wuyong | Jia Zhangke | People's Republic of China |
Corto Cortissimo
In the Corto Cortissimo competition section , eighteen short films in 35 mm format were shown, which did not exceed thirty minutes. The jury was led by the French film director, writer and musician François-Jacques Ossang . The other judges were the Moroccan director Yasmine Kassari and the Italian film editor Roberto Perpignani .
In 2007 there was a retrospective on Morocco in this section. Fourteen short films by Moroccan directors were shown.
The jury of this section decided that the British actor Paddy Considine should be awarded the Silver Lion for best short film for his directorial debut Dog Altogether . Special mention was made of the Russian work Lyudi is kamnja , directed by Leonid Rybakows . The Spanish film Redemption by Eduardo Chapero-Jackson won the Prix UIP ; this film is also nominated for the European Film Award.
| Movie title | Director | Country of production | length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adil e Yusuf | Claudio Noce | Italy | 30 minutes |
| Blind Man's Eye | Matthew Talbot-Kelly | Ireland | 6 minutes |
| Cargo | Leo Woodhead | Czech Republic, New Zealand | 12 minutes |
| Coffee and Allah | Sima Urals | New Zealand | 14 minutes |
| Crossbow | David Michôd | Australia | 14 minutes |
| Dans la peau | Zoltán Horváth | Switzerland, France | 12 minutes |
| Dog Altogether | Paddy Considine | United Kingdom | 16 minutes |
| Redemption ( alumbramiento ) | Eduardo Chapero-Jackson | Spain | 15 minutes |
| Fish | Juhn Jaihong | South Korea, United States | 15 minutes |
| Friends Forever | Marçal Forés | United Kingdom | 22 minutes |
| Fritt case | Caroline Cowan | Sweden | 27 minutes |
| Guo dao | Zhang Yue | People's Republic of China | 20 minutes |
| Ljudi is kamnja | Leonid Rybakov | Russia | 19 minutes |
| Skyggen af Tvivl | Esben Tønnesen | Denmark | 19 minutes |
| Sta yes znam | Sejla Kameric , Timur Makarevic | Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia | 15 minutes |
| Tony Zoreil | Valentin Potier | France | 18 minutes |
| Turelem | László Nemes Jeles | Hungary | 14 minutes |
| Wazki | Justyna Nowak | Poland | 15 minutes |
Films out of competition
Outside of the three competition sections, films by some established directors were shown. So Woody Allen presented his Cassandra dream with Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor as rival brothers. Claude Chabrol showed his work The Woman Divided in Two and Takeshi Kitano , who was awarded the Golden Lion in 1998 for his Hana-Bi , his film Kantoku! Banzai! .
This year's retrospective was dedicated to the “Spaghetti Western”. It formed the fourth part of the series The Secret History of Italian Film , in which films that were important to Italian film history are shown restored, and covers the years 1964 to 1976.
Queer Lion
This year, for the first time, the “ Queer Lion ” award was given to a film with homosexual content. The prize has a similar function to the Teddy Award at the Berlinale . The festival spent four years preparing for this award. In 2007 it was awarded to the film The Speed of Life by Ed Radtke , which ran in the section Giornate degli autori , a section for auteur films .
See also
- Berlin International Film Festival 2007
- Cannes International Film Festival 2007
- Toronto International Film Festival 2007
Web links
- Film Festival website (Italian)
- Press review of the film festival on film-zeit.de
- Compilation of the competition films and award winners in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Individual evidence
- ^ Zhang Yimou Jury President at the Venice Film Festival , Salzburger Nachrichten, May 22, 2007
- ↑ Lion Hunt , Der Tagesspiegel, August 27, 2007
- ↑ Michael Althen: Crazy, Commissioner? . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 7, 2007
- ↑ "" Queer Lion "awarded for the first time" on Queer.de, September 10, 2007