The 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival started yesterday. Taking place in the Lido Peninsula in Italy, the oldest film festival in the world opened its curtains with musical comedy "La La Land," written and directed by Damien Chazelle.
Apart from Chazelle's "La La Land," Roan Johnson's "Piuma" (Feather), Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti's "Spira Mirabilis," Giuseppe Piccioni's "Questi Giorni" (These Days), Derek Cianfrance's "The Light Between Oceans," Mariano Cohn and Andres Duprat's "El Ciudadano Ilustre" (The Distinguished Citizen), Lav Diaz's "The Woman Who Left," Amat Escalante's "La Region Salvaje" (The Untamed), Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals," Andrei Konchalovsky's "Paradise," Martin Koolhoven's "Brimstone," Ana Lily Amirpour's "The Bad Batch," "Stephane Brize's "Une Vie" (A Life) Pablo Larrain's "Jackie," Francois Ozon's "Frantz," Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival," Wim Wenders's "Les Beaux Jours d'Aranjuez" (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez) Emir Kusturica's "On The Milky Road," Terrence Malik's "Vojage" (Voyage) and Christopher Murray's "El Cristo Ciego" (Blind Christ) will compete for the Golden Lion.
Dystopian love stories, period dramas, adventure epics, revised Westerns and sci-fi thrillers are all showing at the Lido extravaganza, where Hollywood's creme de la creme rock up in water taxis to dazzle on the red carpet.
The festival jury will be chaired by Sam Mendes, the British director of "American Beauty" and "Sky Fall." The awards will be presented to the winners on Sept. 10.
Turkish director Reha Erdem's "Koca Dünya" (Big Big World) will be screened in the festival's "Horizons" section, which features new movement and aesthetic world films.
A new section titled "MigArtİ" will be also featured in the festival although it is not in the official program. This new section will screen films directed by migrants in Italy. The jury of "MigArti" will be chaired by Turkish director Ferzan Özpetek who has been living in Italy for decades. Last year, Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas's "Desde Alla" won the Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice Film Festival while Turkish director Emin Alper's "Abluka" (Frenzy) won then Special Jury Award.
Films battling for the Lion include Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour's "The Bad Patch", set in a Texas wasteland and starring Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey, as well as Derek Cianfrance's romantic period drama "The Light Between Oceans," featuring real-life couple Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. The pair, who famously met and fell in love on the set of the World War I period drama, play a lighthouse keeper and his wife who have problems conceiving but take in a baby girl washed up ashore in a boat.
Among the most anticipated premieres is legendary director Terrence Malick's 3-D documentary about the birth and death of the universe. "Voyage of Time," a project 40 years in the making, is narrated by Cate Blanchett.
Mel Gibson will be making his directorial comeback after a 10-year break with "Hacksaw Ridge" about a World War II army medic who was the only conscientious objector ever to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Former creative director at Gucci, Tom Ford, who wowed critics and the public alike with his directorial debut "A Single Man" in 2009, is back with "Nocturnal Animals," starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
And there is already a buzz about the out-of-competition offering "The Young Pope," a 10-part series by HBO telling the life of fictional Pius XIII, with a cigarette-smoking Jude Law as the first American pontiff in history.
