This year s Venice film festival showcasing new offerings by the Coen Brothers, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyasaki, will be dedicated to the late Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, organizers said Tuesday.
The central figure in post-war Arab cinema, Chahine died Sunday aged 82 after spending several weeks in a coma.
The 65th Mostra will be dedicated to Youssef Chahine, a unique filmmaker: who else could have succeeded in mixing the philosopher Averroes with Fred Astaire? That s what cinema should be about, festival director Marco Muller told a press conference in Rome.
The film to which he was referring, Destiny, which won the Cannes film festival s 50th anniversary award in 1997, is set in 12th-century Andalusia, with the Arab philosopher Averroes, a harbinger of the Enlightenment, as its dancing hero.
Japanese directors Kitano, with Achilles and the Tortoise, and Miyasaki, with his animated feature Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, are among the favorites for the festival s coveted Golden Lion award.
Other strong runners include US director Darren Aronofsky s The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, and French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder s thriller L Inju: la Bete dans l Ombre, or The Beast in the Shadows.
Other American contenders include Guillermo Arriaga s “The Burning Plain, starring Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron; Kathryn Bigelow s “The Hurt Locker, starring Ralph Fiennes; and Jonathan Demme s “Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt.
The festival opens on August 27 with an out-of-competition world premiere for Joel and Ethan Coen s Burn after Reading, which unites perennial Coen favorite George Clooney with John Malkovich, Brad Pitt and Scots Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton.
Other films being shown out of competition include French director Claire Denis 35 Rums, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami s Shirin and an autobiographical documentary by Australian director Agnes Varda.
Veteran German director Wim Wenders, the man behind Buena Vista Social Club and Paris, Texas, will head this year s jury, which also includes Italian actress Valeria Golino, Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and Hong Kong s Johnnie To.
The festival runs through until September 6. -AFP
