When the vast majority of the press and critics accredited at the Venice Film Festival expected the Golden Lion to go to Kaouther Ben Hania –The Tunisian director who shook the Mostra with her denunciation of the genocide in Gaza Voice of Hind Rajab–, the jury chaired by American Alexander Payne has decided to award the gold prize to fellow American Jim Jarmusch, a living legend of American independent cinema who presented in Venice Father mother sister brother, the best film seen on the Mostra screens during the eleven days of the festival.

Four days after a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people crossed the streets of the Lido, the Venice Film Festival hosted this Wednesday the premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, which denounces the murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab at the hands of the Israeli army. The film had generated great expectations, especially due to the comments made by the Mostra's artistic director, Alberto Barbera, who, during the presentation of the program, warned of the film's dramatic force and controversial potential. This concern translated into tightened security controls at the entrances to the festival area. Thus, with a few minutes' delay, the screening of the film that has become the main contender for the Golden Lion of the Festival began.

Kim Novak is back in the spotlight. The American actress, an icon of Hollywood's golden age and the star of one of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, Vertigo (1958), received the Honorary Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival on Monday. She received it at the age of 92, after decades of public absence, and with a clear message: "We need to open our eyes and do everything possible to save our democracies."

It seems impossible to believe, but this Friday Julia Roberts visited the Venice Film Festival for the first time. The 57-year-old actress, a true icon of Hollywood cinema, winner of an Oscar for Erin Brockovich, has stepped onto the red carpet at the Mostra for the first time thanks to his participation in the film After the hunt, directed by Italian Luca Guadagnino and presented out of competition at Venice. In the film, Roberts plays Alma Imhoff, a Yale University professor whose ethical convictions and emotional ties are compromised when she discovers that her best friend and closest confidant (Andrew Garfield) may have sexually assaulted his favorite student, an African-American and Latinx girl. the series The bear.

Jaume Claret Muxart (Barcelona, ​​​​1998) is part of the first promotion of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastián, and in just a few years has managed to position himself on the international scene with short films such as She and I (2020) and The Donau, (2023). This Friday sees the release of the first feature film, Strange river, in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. The film will also be shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival and will be released on October 3. Shot on 16mm film along the Danube, Strange river Based on the bicycle trips Claret took with his family as a child, it unfolds as a fictional story about adolescence, transformation, and family ties. It stars Nausicaa Bonnín, Jordi Oriol, and newcomer Jan Monter.

The Venice Film Festival brings back fond memories for the artistic duo of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and American actress Emma Stone. It was in the 2018 Exhibition that premiered The favorite, the film that inaugurated a long and fertile collaboration that, until now, has as its high point the Golden Lion that it took home Poor creatures in 2023. This Thursday the 82nd edition of the Italian competition hosted the world premiere of Bugonia, the fourth project shared by the director of Lobster and the protagonist of La La Land, which is actually a remake from the South Korean film Save the green planet! (2003). Jang Joon-hwan's film was a crazy, surreal pop delirium that played with the theory that the director of a large company could be the emissary of an alien race determined to eliminate the Earth. Now it is reinterpreted, urgently and in a refined way, by a Lanthimos who finds an ideal receptacle for his misanthropic gaze, his mastery of the scene and his taste for brutality.

One of the main objectives of the 82nd Venice Film Festival is to establish itself as a privileged showcase for the best Italian cinema. Accustomed to seeing the country's great filmmakers, such as Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher, present their works at Cannes, this year the veteran Italian festival is betting on local talent, starting with Paolo Sorrentino. Despite being a regular presence at the French event, the director of The great beauty has opened this year's Mostra with The grace, a film that broadens Sorrentino's approach to the universe of politics, a territory he already satirized in Il divo (2008) and in Silvio (and the others) (2018), two parody portraits of Giulio Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi. At the press conference for the presentation of The grace In Venice, Sorrentino has expressed his interest in making a political film "at a historical moment in which ethics seems optional, elusive, opaque, or invoked only for instrumental reasons."

Calls to take a stand on the war in Gaza are reaching the Venice International Film Festival as it approaches its opening. Through the Venice4Palestine collective, hundreds of industry professionals have launched a open letter in which they demand that the festival condemn what they call genocide and open spaces for visibility during the Festival, which runs from August 27 to September 6. The letter has garnered more than 1,500 signatures, including those of directors such as Ken Loach, Marco Bellocchio, Alice Rohrwacher, Céline Sciamma, and Abel Ferrara.