Venice’s International Critics’ Week aka Settimana Internazionale della Critica have made their selections for their 41st edition and we’ve got some Sundance, Rotterdam and Cannes alumni filmmakers amongst this batch. From India, Shalini Adnani brings her family drama with themes of inequality and environmental crisis in Our Share of Sand. La torre helmer Sebastián Múnera goes full fiction mode with Meteorite – a female-centred story set in a land still haunted by the ghosts of violence. Italy is represented in three different strokes with one comp item in Tommaso Usberti‘s Prima della guerra which stars actress (sometimes director as was the case with The Hill Where Lionesses Roar) Luàna Bajrami, and Piero Usberti in a coming-of-age tale focusing on masculinity with extraordinary maturity. And we also have from China Dong Jie moving from editor (2021 Cannes selected Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Wen Shipei) to director with Gen Z portrait Zoom In, Zoom Out. Here are the seven selections and the opening/closing film selections:
IN COMPETITION
The End of Times — Bibiana Rojas Gómez, Juan David Cárdenas / Colombia
The H@llow Man — Kamel Laaridhi / Tunisia
London — Victor Di Marco, Márcio Picoli / Brazil
Meteorite — Sebastián Múnera / Colombia
Our Share of Sand — Shalini Adnani / India, United Kingdom, Greece
Prima della guerra — Tommaso Usberti / France, Italy
Zoom In, Zoom Out — Dong Jie
Giaffa the Great – Marco Santi / OPENING
Rider – Roan Johnson, Davide Pavanello / CLOSING
