Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice and Regina King’s directorial debut One Night In Miami have been added to the lineup of the 77th Venice Film Festival, where they will both play out of competition.
One Night In Miami marks the directorial debut of Oscar-winning actress King, who secured an Emmy nomination last week for her leading role in HBO miniseries Watchmen.
The film, which was acquired last week by Amazon Studios and selected for Toronto, explores events of February 25, 1964, when a young Cassius Clay (who would later rename himself Muhammad Ali) spends the night with three friends celebrating his new world heavyweight boxing crown after a shock defeat over Sonny Liston.
Unable to celebrate on Miami Beach because of segregation laws, Clay and his friends spend the night at the Hampton House Motel. The friends are activist Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke, and American football star Jim Brown and the following morning the four men will emerge determined to define a new world for themselves and their people. Eli Goree, Leslie Odom Jr., Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Aldis Hodge star.
Olivier-nominated Kemp Powers wrote the screenplay based on his 2013 stage play. Jess Wu Calder and Keith Calder of Snoot Entertainment (Blindspotting, Anomalisa) produced and Jody Klein of ABKCO, King and Powers are executive producers.
The Human Voice stars Tilda Swinton and is an adaptation of a one-act play by Jean Cocteau, which has inspired previous Almodóvar features such as 1988’s Oscar-nominated Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
Marking the first English-language film by the Spanish director, Swinton plays a desperate woman who waits for a phone call from the lover who has just abandoned her. Running approximately 30-minutes, the film was shot and edited “in record time” as soon as lockdown was lifted. It is produced by Almodóvar’s El Deseo.
The Spanish filmmaker received Venice’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at last year’s festival and Swinton will receive the same honour at this year’s edition.
Venice is set to go ahead as a physical event from September 2-12, marking the first major film festival to do so since the virus crisis.
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