With Cannes kicking off the international film festival season next week, the Venice Film Festival organizers are beginning to put the pieces in place for their big event, which will run from September 1-11, overlapping the Toronto Film Festival, which will kick off September 9th.
The big news revealed today is that Quentin Tarantino has been selected to head the jury for the in competition films. While none of Tarantino’s films have ever played at Venice, he has worked with the festival before overseeing the Italian Kings of the B’s and Spaghetti Westerns sidebars in 2004 and 2007. Tarantino’s love of world cinema is pretty clear and he is a solid choice to head up the jury this year.
There are already a few highly buzzed titles expected to appear. Leading the pack is Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” which is pretty much a lock at this point. As we reported back in February, with Coppola expected to give birth any moment now, she opted to go the Venice-Toronto premiere route she did for “Lost In Translation.” You can consider this film as near a certainty to appearing as possible.
Two other titles tipped to appear were previously in the mix for Cannes. First up is Julian Schnabel’s “Miral” being rumored to unveil in Venice. We had heard that an Out Of Competition slot for Cannes was offered to Schnabel who turned it down. This would confirm rumors that Schnabel will similarly go the Venice-Toronto route for his film that stars “Freida Pinto as a refugee camp teacher in postwar Jerusalem.”
The other once potential Cannes entry, Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” is expected to appear in Venice. Ozon’s film, said to be considered for the Cannes opening night slot (which ended up going to “Robin Hood”), will apparently be given an official selection slot at Venice; so the French director will now have to premiere his latest outside his home country.
The final film rumored (for now) is Monte Hellman’s (“Two-Lane Blacktop”) first feature in over two decades, “Road To Nowhere.” The film stars Dominique Swain and Shannyn Sossamon in a “noirish tale of a young filmmaker who becomes enmeshed in a criminal scheme while making a movie on location.” Sounds pretty meta.
More details and lots of speculation to come in the next few months, but of course the biggest question on everyone’s mind right now is: will Terrence Malick‘s” The Tree Of Life” premiere at Venice?
–Written by Kevin Jagernauth
