Screen profiles the titles in the Venice Open (the new name for out of competition) sections, including Fiction, Non Fiction, Film on Films, Short Films and the one series selection.
Venice Open – Fiction
Arrested Memory (Tai-Japan)
Dir. Sabu
Japanese director Sabu’s latest is a Taiwan-set, Chinese-language film starring Ethan Juan as a traumatised police detective who is hiding his fast-failing memory while cracking the kidnapping case of an influential Japanese businessman’s son. The cast also includes Moon Lee, Hsieh Ying Xuan, Shinichi Tsutsumi and Reika Kirishima. Producers are Taiwan’s LHB Films and Japan’s Fourier Films. Sabu previously directed 2015’s Chasuke’s Journey and 2017’s Mr. Long, both of which played in Berlinale Competition.
Contact: Lucky Number
The Basics Of Philosophy (US)
Dir. Paul Schrader
Most recently in Venice with 2022 mystery Master Gardener, Schrader returns with the latest in his ‘man in a room’ series exploring troubled characters, which includes Taxi Driver (as screenwriter) and First Reformed. Jack Huston plays a professor wrestling with guilt over a past decision, whose victim reappears in his life. Bill Pullman and Sofia Boutella also star. Schrader wrote the screenplay and reunites with his producers on Venice 2021 selection The Card Counter: Braxton Pope of Film Maudit and David Wulf of Redline Entertainment. CAA Media Finance represents US sales.
Contact: Noora Films (international)
Father Joe (Fr)
Dir. Barthélémy Grossmann
Kiefer Sutherland, Al Pacino and Ever Anderson star in this 1990s-set action thriller about a priest in Manhattan’s mob-run Little Italy neighbourhood who turns the city’s underworld into his congregation and sets out to save lives beyond the walls of his church. The film was written and produced by Luc Besson via LB Production and EuropaCorp. Grossmann is a Switzerland-born, France-based filmmaker who directed Arthur, Malediction, also written and produced by Besson. CAA Media Finance is handling North America rights.
Contact: Kinology (international)
God Laughs (It)
Dir. Giovanni Veronesi
Lido regular Pierfrancesco Favino heads up Veronesi’s period comedy drama about an itinerant 16th-century friar who built a wide following and earned the Vatican’s enmity by humanising the gospels and rejecting Church Latin. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera hailed God Laughs as “a winning combination of lightness and irony applied to a theme that is traditionally dealt with seriously”. Sold by Italo-French joint venture PiperPlay, which launched at last year’s festival, the film will be released in Italy by PiperFilm on October 29.
Contact: Giulia Casavecchia, PiperPlay
The Good Lawyer (Fr)
Dir. Tristan Seguela
Netflix is back in Venice with its first French-language offering since Athena premiered in Competition in 2022. Laurent Lafitte stars as a flamboyant, cocaine-addicted defence lawyer who overdoses in the middle of a courtroom and, after a stint in rehab, has one week to save his career. The cast also includes Anthony Bajon, Mélanie Laurent and Carole Bouquet. Seguela has a string of French comedy film credits to his name, including 2013’s The Adulteen (also starring Lafitte), 2019’s A Good Doctor and 2023’s Un Homme Heureux.
Contact: Netflix
Jupiter (Fr)
Dir. Alexandre Smia
This thriller is set in the titular bunker under the Élysée Palace as France’s newly elected president (Denis Ménochet) enters crisis discussions, with nuclear war looming after an assassination attempt on Russia’s leader. André Dussollier, Ella Rumpf, Reda Kateb and Dominique Blanc co-star. Smia makes his directorial debut after writing the screenplay for Martin Bourboulon’s 13 Days, 13 Nights and episodes of The Bureau. It is produced by Mediawan’s Chi-Fou-Mi.
Contact: Ramy Nahas, SND
Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors (Phil)
Dir. Lav Diaz
Venice regular Diaz returns for the ninth time after winning multiple awards including the Golden Lion for The Woman Who Left in 2016. Shot in black and white, his latest is set in 1617 when imperial Spain forcefully reconstructed the Philippines, causing suffering and death. When a cruel Spanish friar wants valuable marble for the new church, his juvenile son and porters assigned for the transportation become the prime target for bandits. The ensemble cast includes Bart Guingona, Ronnie Lazaro, Isabel Sandoval and Christian Bables. Production companies are C’est Lovi Productions, Epicmedia Productions and Sine Olivia Pilipinas.
Contact: Heretic
No Pain (It)
Dir. Gianni Amelio
Two years after First World War drama Battlefield, which screened in Competition, veteran Italian director Amelio returns to Venice in a non-competitive slot with a present-day story starring high-profile local talents Alessandro Borghi (The Eight Mountains) and Valeria Golino. Borghi plays a man consumed by guilt after unwittingly causing a tragic event. Topping Rai Cinema International Distribution’s slate, Amelio’s latest is produced by Kavac Film (Rosebush Pruning), Be Water and Rai Cinema.
Contact: Fulvio Firrito, Rai Cinema International Distribution
No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman (Nor-Iraq-UAE-Swe)
Dir. Halkawt Mustafa
Norwegian Kurdish filmmaker Mustafa knows how to pick an eye-catching title, with previous work including 2023 documentary Hiding Saddam Hussein and 2015 TV doc The Women Isis Fears. His third fiction feature returns to the group featured in that latter work, following a Kurdish sniper who discovers her sister, lost in a 2014 Isis attack, may be alive in Mosul. The film is inspired by Mustafa’s conversations with real Kurdish women who fought Isis, and filmed partly in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Mustafa’s most recent fiction feature, 2015’s Cristiano Ronaldo-inspired drama The Classic, played festivals including Tribeca, and was Iraq’s entry for the 2017 Oscars.
Contact: True Colours
Place To Be (Australia)
Dir. Kornel Mundruczo
Mundruczo had a tough reception in Berlin this year with At The Sea but Venice has been a happier hunting ground for the Hungarian filmmaker: his 2020 feature Pieces Of A Woman picked up two prizes on the Lido — the Volpi Cup for Vanessa Kirby and the Arca CinemaGiovani award. Place To Be, again scripted by his partner Kata Weber, casts veteran Ellen Burstyn and New Zealand actor, comedian and filmmaker Taika Waititi as a duo striking up an unlikely friendship on a journey from Chicago to New York, accompanying a lost racing pigeon. Ukrainian mogul Alexander Rodnyansky is among the producers of the Australia-made drama, which has backing from S’YA Concept and Screen NSW’s Made in NSW fund.
Contact: WME Independent
Trick (It)
Dir. Mario Martone
Toni Servillo is back in Venice in a chamber drama by Martone, the Neapolitian director with whom the actor has a long association. Servillo plays an elderly illustrator who finds himself looking after his precocious five-year-old grandson in his former Neapolitan family home. Based on the novel by Domenico Starnone and produced by Mad Entertainment with Rai Cinema, in association with Picomedia, the film is released in Italy by 01 Distribution and has already sold to five other European territories, plus Brazil.
Contact: Fulvio Firrito, Rai Cinema International Distribution
Venice Open: Non Fiction, Film on Films, Short Films
A longside the 11 fiction titles profiled, the subsidiary sections of Venice Open (the new name for out of competition) include Non Fiction, which is showcasing 19 documentary features, Film on Films, Short Films and a single series (Regia Valerio Vestoso’s Peccato).
Non Fiction contains new features from documentary auteurs including US veteran Barbara Kopple, who won an Oscar for Harlan County, USA in 1977 and returns to the theme of labour strife with Union Town (sold by Autlook Filmsales); and Wim Wenders, who is back on the Lido with From Inside Out — The Architecture Of Peter Zumthor (HanWay Films).
On the political front, Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila’s Listy (Letters From The Silenced Country) (Filmotor) looks at the plight of political prisoners in his homeland, while Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama follows a photographer struggling to protect his wife and child in northern Gaza. Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai presents The Road To Jericho, which includes interviews he did with assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin about pursuing peace in the Middle East.
Several of the non-fiction titles have epic running times, including prolific US director Alex Gibney’s Musk (Black Bear), his almost-four-hour portrait of Elon Musk, while Russian director Julia Loktev’s Mubi-backed My Undesirable Friends: Part II Exile, about Russian opposition journalists now living abroad, clocks in at nearly six hours. Argentinian director Mariano Llinas’s Life Of Jose Luis Borges (Luxbox), about the legendary author, runs 330 minutes.
For natural history, Russian documentary giant Victor Kossakovsky presents Holy Wood Dust (Rai Cinema International Distribution), looking at the world of plants with visionary botanist Stefano Mancuso. Russell Crowe presents What Love Builds, his film about his music band.
US-based Italian filmmaker and photographer Francesco Carrozzini has Be Brave, a portrait of fashion guru Renzo Rosso produced by Our Films using AI tools.
Oenophiles will savour Burgundy, a fine wine doc from The Truffle Hunters directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, while US doc Boatbuilders from Luke Lorentzen is a paean to the meticulous craftsmanship of workers in Brooklin Boat Yard, a custom wooden yacht builder in Maine.
Exiled Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s latest documentary Imperium (Coproduction Office) is an archive-based investigation of the colonial roots of the USSR. Japanese genre maverick Takashi Miike turns to documentary for his new film Shumei: The Living Legacy Of Kabuki.
Mancunian scallywags the Gallagher brothers are the subject of Disney and Sony-backed music doc Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger, on which Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight is one of the producers. Also from the UK comes Theo Rollason’s Queer Edward II, about the making of Derek Jarman’s 1991 film about the Plantagenet king in a climate of anti-gay political hostility in Britain.
On the mountaineering front, Free Solo team Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin unveil their latest collaboration Everest: The Other Side (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures). Former Golden Lion winner Tsai Ming-liang’s Dust (Vitrine Films) follows a monk on a spiritual journey.
Venice Open’s six Film on Films include Luca Guadagnino’s tribute to Bernardo Bertolucci, Joie De Vivre, and Walter Fasano’s Nino Rota doc Nino, while the short films selected include jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Flesh Impact, inspired by Marilyn Monroe and starring Dakota Johnson, and They’re Here from Oscar winner Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, which explores ICE’s reign of terror in Minneapolis.
Words by: Ben Dalton, Tim Dams, Elaine Guerini, Jeremy Kay, Rebecca Leffler, Geoffrey Macnab, Lee Marshall, Thea Middleton, David Opie, Michael Rosser, Matt Schley, Mona Tabbara, Silvia Wong
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