Fall Preview: See Who Gets the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival

Leah Bourne
·1 min read

The Venice Film Festival, running this year from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7, remains one of the most important film festivals of the year. The winners here end up being those who snag big wins at Sundance and eventually at the Oscars. Just look at what happened when The Hurt Locker and Black Swan won big in Venice.
This year is the festival’s 70th anniversary and stars in the running include George Clooney and Sandra Bullock playing astronauts adrift in space, Scarlett Johansson as a seductive alien roaming the Scottish countryside, and Judi Dench as a single Roman Catholic woman searching for a son she was forced to give up decades before.
Festival director Alberto Barbera shared in a press conference: “Perhaps one of the strongest themes that emerges from all the films is the lack of prospects. There’s an acknowledgment of an extremely problematic situation, in some cases tragic…Cinema mirrors reality, so we can’t complain if auteur films today gives us an image of our times that is not consoling.”
Twenty films will vie for the coveted Golden Lion including Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem,” starring Christoph Waltz as a reclusive computer genius, and Peter Landesman’s “Parkland,” which tells the story of the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Kelly Reichardt is bringing “Night Moves” to the festival starring Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard as environmental activists plotting to blow up a dam.
Watching movies in Venice before they hit the multiplex? We can think of no better way to kick off fall.
For more information visit labiennale.org.

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