Despite a few logistical hiccups, the management of the Venice Film Festival can be pleased with the success of this 79e edition, the first taking place under normal conditions since 2019. Now all that remains is to await the verdict of the jury, chaired by Julianne Moore.
Posted at 2:28 p.m.
Since Friday, it feels a bit like the end of the party. We’re starting to pack things up, we’re a little less careful about searching bags, and journalists no longer have to elbow their way to attend screenings intended for them. Several of them left the city of the Doges on Wednesday to fly to the Queen City in order to arrive there in time for the opening night, held on Thursday.
At the start of the pandemic, when one film festival after another announced the holding of a virtual version, several observers wondered about the future of this type of event, for which it would probably be – if not certainly – impossible to return to the traditional model. Two years later, it is clear that this is not the case. Memory being, according to the adage, a faculty that forgets, festival-goers resumed their habits as soon as they could, chasing bad pandemic memories from their minds as quickly as possible.
Apart from the fact that journalists now have to reserve their places on an online platform that too often breaks down at peak times, everything is back to normal.
A selection of beautiful outfits
We haven’t come to the Mostra often enough to be able to really draw conclusions on the quality of the 2022 vintage compared to previous years, but the selection was undeniably very good this year. Among the favorites of the press are three titles in particular: TARby Todd Field, in which Cate Blanchett embodies a conductor entangled in a #metoo story; Saint-Omer, by Alice Diop, a moving film, inspired by a true story of infanticide that occurred in France a few years ago; and The Banshees of Inisherinby Martin McDonagh, a caustic dramatic comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
The international press also militates a great deal in favor ofAll the Beauty and the Bloodshed, the documentary that Laura Poitras devotes to New York artist and activist Nan Goldin. For its part, the Italian press does not budge: Bones and Allby Luca Guadagnino, a cannibalistic romance with Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, has remained his great favorite since the second festival day.
The direction of a jury being always unpredictable, it could well be that all these titles are packed in favor of works displaying a singular artistic approach. The same can be said for performance awards. If several big stars register here one of their best performances in career (Cate Blanchett in TARAna de Armas in Blonde hairBrendan Fraser in The WhaleHugh Jackman in The Son), the fact remains that much lesser-known actors offered equally striking performances. We think in particular of Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanda in Saint-Omer. There is also a lot of talk about transgender actress Trace Lysette, headliner of Monica.
The jury, chaired by Julianne Moore, will deliver its verdict on Saturday.
Jafar Panahi in more serious mode
The new feature film by Jafar Pahani, filmmaker who already won a Golden Lion in 2000 (The circle), was presented on Friday, preceded by a rally on the Sala Grande red carpet to remind the world that filmmakers are persecuted and imprisoned in certain countries. In 2010, Jafar Panahi was sentenced to a six-year prison term and a twenty-year movie ban. In July, he was arrested and thrown into jail to serve his sentence.
“I wanted to go see him, but only members of his family are allowed to visit him,” said Reza Heydari in a press conference. The latter, usually sound engineer for Jafar Panahi’s films, fits in No Bears the role… of a sound engineer!
Like all of the director’s most recent feature films, Taxi Tehran, No Bears was filmed clandestinely. However, the tone is much more serious this time. Taking his own role, Jafar Panahi tells two parallel stories, the main one being the one that puts him on stage with a small film crew. Unable to leave the country, he goes to a small village near the Turkish border, where the conflict between the urbanites of Tehran and the rural people of the village – between modernity and tradition – is quite intense. At the same time, the immigration desires of the Iranian couple that Panahi is filming come up against bureaucracy…
Selected in official competition, No Bears has nothing in its tone of the kind of bonhomie that one usually finds in the films of Jafar Panahi. A little as if the filmmaker sensed the darker days ahead for him. And for his country.