67th Venice Film Festival: Gallo, Coppola, Reichardt Selected in the Main Comp

Knowing Quentin Tarantino’s appreciation for films that are “out there”: if I had to do some really early predictions here, I’d say that the Gold and Silver Lion front-runners are in Alex De La Iglesia’s bizarro fantasy film A Sad Trumpet Ballad, Pablo Larrain’s Post Mortem or Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg (a filmmaker we recently profiled in our American New Wave 25 series – she spent more than a decade in Austin’s film scene). I’d also add put Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus high up on any awards list, especially the Lido – it’s a film I’ve been pegging for Venice since the film went into production.

Added to Aronofsky’s Black Swan, the U.S is repped by Monte Hellman and his comeback film, Road to Nowhere, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, indie female helmers Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff) and Sofia Coppola (Meek’s Cutoff), and the Coppola-Tetro connection Vincent Gallo – I’m sure he won’t get booed on the Lido for Promises Written on Water. Not announced but perhaps pegged for a non comp debut are The Town (Ben Affleck) and The American (Anton Corbijn).

Italy is well repped this year in Celestini’s La Pecora Nera, Carlo Mazzacurati’s La Passione, Saverio Costanzo’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers and Mario Martone’s Noi Credevamo, while Canadian-Italian co-production Barney’s Version will of course hit Lido before Toronto. Italy’s neighbor to the West (France) will have the determined well in advance titles of Happy Few from Antony Cordier and François Ozon’s Potiche (see Deneuve pic above).

Asian titles include: Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung), Thirteen Assassins (Takashi Miike) and Tsui Hark’s latest goes by the fuller title of Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame. Finally, the Europes are repped by Tom Twyker’s Three and an off the radar title of Silent Souls from Aleksei Fedorchenko.

The festival announced that it will add one more title midway during the fest (September 6th) and if it’s not the Malick film, then expect the Rome Film Festival to fight hard for The Tree of Life. Titles mysteriously not mentioned that could fill that void include: Peter Mullan’s Neds, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech and William Monahan’s London Boulevard. 

Look for the Out of Competition films to be named shortly, here is the complete list of competing films.