Jane Campion will unveil her first new feature in over a decade at this year’s Venice Film Festival. “The Power of the Dog,” a Netflix Original, is set to make its world premiere in competition at the fest. Variety broke the news.
Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, “The Power of the Dog” is set 1920s Montana and tells the story Phil and George Burbank. The former is “brilliant and cruel,” while the latter is ” fastidious and gentle.” The wealthy brothers are “joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley. When George secretly marries local widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst), an angry Phil wages a relentless war to destroy her by using her son Peter as a pawn,” the source hints.
Campion previously premiered “An Angel at My Table” at the 1990 edition of the fest, where it took home Venice’s Grand Jury Prize. She was the first — and remains the only — woman director to receive Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious prize, the Palme d’Or. She landed the honor in 1993 for “The Piano.”
Released in 2009, Campion’s last feature, “Bright Star,” revisited the romance between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. More recently, she worked on the small screen: Along with Gerard Lee, she created “Top of the Lake,” a Sundance Channel/BBC mystery about a detective investigating the disappearance of a 12-year-old pregnant girl.
Dunst received an Emmy nod for “Fargo” in 2016. She was last seen in Showtime’s “On Becoming a God in Central Florida,” a dark comedy about a water park employee who schemes her way into a multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme.
Venice Film Festival is slated to run September 1-11.