Isabelle Huppert incarnates post-colonial whites terrorized by roving child soldiers in White Material, unveiled Sunday by French director Claire Denis.
In the drama set on a coffee plantation, a white family faces the wrenching decision of whether to flee an impending civil war.
You get attached to a plantation, said Denis, who lived out much of her childhood years on a coffee plantation in Cameroon, where the film was shot.
It was easier for me to put myself in the place of someone who had coffee, she said, lamenting that accounts of west Africa s civil wars are either very political, or very compassionate.
I thought that if I had a farm, if I had to grow coffee for six months… would my view be different?
The conflict breaks out just a week before the end of the coffee harvest, and Huppert s character Maria is desperate to complete the job, going out to hire new help after all her regular workers heed warnings to flee.
She doesn t see the reality and runs headlong towards disaster, Huppert said of her character.
There s something stronger than reason… There s something very Shakespearean in the film, with everything mixed together, politics, intrigue, each character wanting to keep control over something, whether it s family or land.
Also Sunday, John Lasseter and his Disney/Pixar team received a career Golden Lion.
This is a tremendous honor, Lasseter said, flanked by Disney/Pixar directors Brad Bird, Peter Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich.
Pixar is founded on true creative collaboration, he said after receiving the award from George Lucas, who sold off Pixar – then Lucasfilm s computer graphics division – in 1986 for $10 million.
These are my best friends and my brothers in creative filmmaking, Lasseter said.
Lucas offered congratulations to my little backroom operation that started in 1979 and went on to create such films as Finding Nemo, Wall-E, The Incredibles, and the Toy Story series.
When festival director Marco Mueller told Lasseter they were selected for the award, he said: I quickly went online and looked at the other Golden Lions, and said, wait a minute, a Golden Lion for a bunch of animation geeks from northern California?
Lasseter also noted that it was the first time a studio had been awarded to a studio, which he said is so appropriate for Pixar because we have 250 filmmakers working on every movie we do.
The Mostra festival screened 3-D versions of Toy Story 1 and its sequel on Sunday, as well as five minutes of the unfinished Toy Story 3.
Meanwhile US documentarist Michael Moore met the press for the second day in a row Sunday to discuss his hard-hitting Capitalism: A Love Story.
He said he hoped the film would give a voice to people whose lives are ruined by decisions by people who don t have their best interests in mind.
The Oscar-winning creator of Fahrenheit 911 added: Democracy is not a spectator sport, it s participatory.
Pointing to the Berlin Wall coming down and Nelson Mandela emerging from an apartheid prison to eventually become president of South Africa, Moore said: I m constantly surprised at the ability of people around the world to make things possible.
People can revolt in very good ways, non-violently, as people did in the United States last November, he said, referring to Barack Obama s victory in the US presidential election.
When Moore started making Capitalism: A Love Story, he told his team: Let s imagine this is the last film they let us make, the last we ever make. Let s speak the words that need to be spoken, however nervous we may be.
Moore pulls no punches in the documentary blasting evil capitalism, delivering the message with his trademark biting humor laced with a few dollops of inspiration.
Another documentary that premiered on Sunday is Oliver Stone s South of the Border, a sympathetic take on left-leaning South American leaders, notably Venezuela s Hugo Chavez, who are often vilified in the US media.
Through a series of interviews interlaced with footage from US media and official statements, Stone is out to show that Chavez is not public enemy number one as so often depicted on US media outlets such as Fox News.
He tells the story of Venezuela s peaceful revolution since Chavez came to power in 1998, and how Venezuela s transformation has had knock-on effects in the rest of the continent.
For his admirers, Chavez, who grew up in a peasant family, is an emblematic figure of bottom-up change, says Stone, who directed the 2003 film Comandante about Cuba s Fidel Castro and the Central America war movie Salvador in 1986.
Interviewed by Stone, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner says in the film: It is the first time in history that the leaders of so many countries look like the people they govern.
She points to Bolivia s first indigenous head of state Evo Morales, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former metalworker, Paraguayan leader Fernando Lugo, a former priest, and Chavez himself, all of whom came from the bottom rungs of society.
Each is interviewed by Stone, 62, who has Oscars for Platoon (1986), Born on the 4th of July (1989) and the screenplay of Midnight Express (1978).
For many years we had elites that were servile to the United States, says Lula in the documentary, which was shown in a screening for the press.
Reports say Chavez may come to Venice for the official screening of South of the Border out of competition on Monday.
The appearance of a foreign head of state would be a rarity in the long history of the world s oldest film festival.
Currently on a world tour that has taken him to Asia, Africa and Europe, Chavez does not give details of his private visits for security reasons.
Yes, it is possible to change the course of history, says Chavez, adding: I hope (US President Barack) Obama will become a new Roosevelt.
The film is in the Mostra s Horizons section.
