The 68th Venice Film Festival kicks off at the end of this month (31 August) with a whole host of world premieres including Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (read our preview here), Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, George Clooney’s The Ides of March, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and Abel Ferrara’s apocalyptic drama 4:44 Last Day on Earth, with the above films also in the running for the festival’s main prize – the Golden Lion.
Other new screenings of note include Steve McQueen’s follow up to 2008’s superb Hunger, entitled Shame, Al Pacino’s latest project behind the camera Wilde Salome, the return of controversial auteur Roman Polanski with Carnage and Steven Soderbergh’s viral outbreak thriller Contagion, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and our very own Kate Winslet. Oh, and Madonna is back (*panic*) with a biography of everyone’s least favourite American icon (*pause*)…Wallis Simpson – AKA the one-time Duchess of Windsor, in the efficiently titled W.E.
Diplomatic outcries regarding Taiwan and China’s filmmaking relationship aside (Guardian story here), this year’s Venice Film Festival lineup looks particularly strong and – alongside the Toronto and London film festivals – should help to soften some of the critical outcry regarding 2011’s relatively poor cinematic output.
For more Venice Film Festival 2011 coverage, simply follow this link.
What films are you most looking forward to as 2011 reaches its second half? Leave your thoughts and comments below.
Here’s the official trailer for Clooney’s The Ides of March.
Daniel Green
