A still from ‘Aïcha’ by Mehdi Barsaoui, courtesy of The Party Film Sales
This year there are 12 Doha Film Institute supported films in the lineup on the Lido, plus the DFI is hosting a special afternoon and even a gala dinner celebrating their achievements in the world of cinema and art.
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A still from Tan Chui Mui’s film, courtesy of the Prada Group
A yearly appointment at the Venice Film Festival, fashion brand Miu Miu, also a Creative Partner of Giornate degli Autori, has once again sponsored two women filmmakers in the creation of a short film each, about women and their world; the shorts will screened during the upcoming festival, with their directors and casts in attendance.
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A still from 'Roma' the Venice Golden Lion winning film by Alfonso Cuarón which will be in theater and on Netflix in December 2018
This year's Venice Film Festival seemed to carry a special soundtrack, like a mixtape of our collective thoughts and hopes and wishes. For a future where we are finally able to learn from our past and stop thinking that our opinions count individually. For a world where we will discover, finally, a middle ground in shades of grey, instead of living everything in either black or white.
Here is my Venezia 75 Mixtape.
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Bouli Lanners, flanked by Justine Lacroix, right and Sarah Henochsberg in Claire Burger's 'C'est ça l'amour'
Think back to the last time a film redefined love for you. That felt like a magical discovery then, didn't it? For me, cinema exists at its best when it does something that changes me -- and of course I want that change to be for the better.
In Claire Burger's touching follow up to her Cannes Camera d'Or winner 'Party Girl' -- which she co-directed with Marie Amachoukeli and Samuel Theis -- I found a new fatherhood role model. For a woman whose own father was at best unavailable throughout my teenage years and beyond, Burger's wondrous father figure Mario (played by the spellbinding Bouli Lanners) is a revelation and offers a sense of newfound hope. His quest to be a good father to the young Frida (the perfectly rebellious Justine Lacroix) and the teenage Kiki (cool and flirty Sarah Henochsberg) takes the audience on a journey of discovery along with the characters.
But 'C'est ça l'amour' is a multilayered film and so it's no surprise that, among quite a few strong and beautiful stories featured in this year's Giornate degli Autori line up, Burger's film ended up walking away with the top prize -- the GdA Director's Award.
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As we watch our nightly dose of immigration porn fed to us by the local news channels, particularly those of us who live in Europe we see row after row of young men stepping off boats and assorted vessels. We could be mistaken into thinking that they left their women safe at home, in their country of origin, the wives and girlfriends and mothers awaiting their return, as well as their paycheck. That's so far from the truth and if you ever held such a wrong opinion, 'Joy' by Sudabeh Mortezai will set you straight.
In her beautifully shot and perfectly told film premiering in the Giornate degli Autori, Venice Days sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, Mortezai shows us the complex network of Nigerian women who virtually invisibly inhabit our European streets. 'Joy' is as much about the oldest profession in the world, the prostitution networks these women get sucked into and then, once they have paid off their debts, also manage and run in Europe, as it is about womanhood itself. We follow the story of these young women from the juju ritual they are subjected to at home, in Benin City Nigeria, to the streets of Vienna where they owe their traffickers the kind of money one wouldn't spend traveling around the world for a year and staying at the best hotels.
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The first ever Venice Film Festival was held in 1932, from the 6th to the 21st of August and it opened with 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' -- the Fredric March version. March went on to win favorite actor and since there were no official prizes, he was picked by the audience.
In that magical moment, during the first edition of the first ever world film festival our own profession -- film criticism and film writing -- was also born. There hadn't been a true need for it before, think about it.
When I come to Venice, I realize this is where it all comes from, and despite some problematic years in our history, we should remember the heritage of the Venice Film Festival. All journalists should take a moment and think about that when they first set foot on the Lido. Without Venice, we probably wouldn't be here. They started it. All.
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'Joy' by Sudabeh Mortezai, featuring Joy Anwulika Alphonsus
So you may have read by now that the Venice Film Festival is being singled out for not having enough women filmmakers in their Competition line-up. One publication even went so far to criticize Italian culture as a whole, and they used two non-Italian reporters to write the story of course -- one the token male journalist. Because a single, lone, able woman journalist would not have been able to do the job?
Ever hear that saying "don't talk bad about my mama?"
Anyway, while everyone is up in arms for yet another slight at womanhood, I say, get over it! I'm a woman, I'm Italian and I feel very well represented in Venice -- thank you very much. In fact, I have never seen so many beautiful women's stories, so much truth for our gender and so much care in telling those stories as I see in the various line-ups and sidebars this year at La Biennale del Cinema. But of course, you'd have to look beyond the media-selling headlines, watch deeper, dig in the sidebars too and know in your heart that great cinema was never about gender, rather about quality and vision. Just like it ain't about politics, even when the subject is political.
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