The Venice Film Festival released the full lineup for its 71st iteration (August 27-September 6) today. Though the Lido beats out Toronto’s paltry 10% female lineup, its 17% female statistic doesn’t give us much faith that Venice is interested in a diversity of vision this year.
The biggest women-directed projects will be screened out of competition, including Lisa Cholodenko’s HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, about a man who begins to suspect that his long-distance girlfriend actually lives in the same sleepy New England town that he does, and Ann Hui’s festival closer The Golden Era, a biopic of Chinese female political writer and revolutionary Xiao Hong.
The two films in competition for the Golden Lion are Iranian director Rakhshan Bani E’temad’s Tales, a socially conscious drama about people living at the margins of Tehran, and French director Alix Delaporte’s La dernier coup de marteau, a film about a 14-year-old girl, the plot of which is tightly under wraps.
Here are the 9 female-directed films (out of a total of 53) that will be showcased in the main programs at Venice this year:
IN COMPETITION — 2/19
“Tales,” Rakhshan Bani E’temad (Iran)
“Le dernier coup de marteau,” Alix Delaporte (France)
OUT OF COMPETITION — 4/17
“Words with Gods,” Guillermo Arriaga, Emir Kusturica, Amos Gitai. Mira Nair, Warwick Thornton, Hector Babenco, Bahman Ghobadi, Hideo Nakata, Alex de la Iglesia (Mexico. U.S.)
“Olive Kitteridge,” Lisa Cholodenko (U.S.)
“La trattativa,” Sabina Guzzanti (Italy)
“The Golden Era,” Ann Hui (China, Hong Kong)
HORIZONS — 3/17
“Line of Credit,” Salome Alexi (Georgia, Germany, France)
“I Spy/I Spy,” Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala (Austria)
“Your Right Mind,” Ami Canaan Mann (U.S.)
[via Variety]
