Amir Naderi’s Cut to open Venice’s Orizzonti

Iranian director Amir Naderi’s Cut will open the Venice film festival’s Orizzonti section, the Biennale announced on Wednesday (July 13).

Naderi, who has lived in New York for over two decades, was last in Venice in 2008 with his competition title Vegas: Based On A True Story, a dark look at the pursuit of the American dream.

Cut, which will be eligible for Orizzonti’s feature length film awards, is an outsider’s take on Japan. Described as a visual love poem for cinema set in the world of the yakuza the film stars Hidetoshi Nishijima (Dolls), Takashi Sasano (Departures) and Takako Tokiwa.

The Biennale has also announced the Orizzonti jury, which is to be led by China’s 2006 Golden Lion winner Jia Zhang-ke, and will include the Tate Modern’s film curator Stuart Comer, French architect Odile Decq, Egyptian producer and director Marianne Khoury and Italian film editor and director Jacopo Quadri.

Venice’s Orizzonti has become more of an experimental free-form section and now includes space for short, medium and long works with prizes specific to each medium. It also welcomes works from artists working in film.

In a separate recent announcement, the Biennale has described changes to its revamped and expanded Controcampo Italiano section, which is dedicated to new trends in Italian cinema and was added to the festival two editions ago.

This year, the section will screen seven features, seven documentaries and seven shorts, with prizes in each category. (In the first two editions the section only offered the Controcampo award for best feature.)

Winner of the best feature will also receive $42,000 (€30,000) of film stock offered by Kodak, while the winner of the best short will receive $14,000 (€10,000) worth of film stock.

The 68th edition of the Venice film festival runs August 31–Sept 10.