George Clooney to the rescue
As with other recent festivals, including Cannes, American stars did not jostle on the red carpet of the Mostra this year.
Invited to receive an honorary Golden Lion, George Clooney went out of his way to bring a touch of glamor to the festival.
The 65-year-old American star delighted his fans with his interventions on all subjects during the first days. After highlighting the incompetence of current American leaders at a press conference, he warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence.
“A lot of people are going to be replaced, not just the actors: members of the technical teams, special effects supervisors…” he worried during a conference on the subject.
He also put on a show on the red carpet by taking a photo, with the latter’s camera, of an AFP photographer who was invited to hold up her honorary Golden Lion in his place.
A family affair
In the absence of the Hollywood heavyweights, the Gallagher brothers electrified the festival for the out-of-competition presentation of the documentary dedicated to their reunion tour, “Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger”.
American director Casey Affleck also walked the red carpet with his family, with his brother Ben and his two sons Atticus and Indiana, whom he played in “Company”, his third feature film, in the running for the Golden Lion.
Finally, the glamorous couple par excellence, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, presented “Bunker” by Frenchman Florian Zeller. The two Spanish stars play a couple in crisis after 17 years of relationship, almost like in real life since they have been married since 2010.
The powerful shells
A nearly four-hour documentary presented out of competition looked in detail at the life and work of Elon Musk, a billionaire with incomparable influence.
“Its story is that of an old wine in a new bottle. Basically, it’s the story of a huckster, an unscrupulous stock market promoter,” declared director Alex Gibney, a figure in American documentary cinema.
The film doesn’t offer any major revelations, but it gives voice to an ex-girlfriend of SpaceX and Tesla owner Ashley St. Clair, who said she turned down $40 million to stay silent.
Screened at the opening, “Ink” by Danny Boyle retraces the saga of the tabloid “The Sun”, transformed by the sulphurous Rupert Murdoch thanks to a clever cocktail of sensationalism, sex and scandal.
Female directors shunned
The president of the Mostra jury, the American actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, lit a fuse at the opening of the festival by expressing indignation at the low presence of women filmmakers in competition, only two for 21 films.
“There is obviously a systemic problem. I really think that it is much more difficult for women to get their films financed,” she stressed.
May el-Toukhy, whose film “Woman Unknown” selected in competition addresses the issue of the invisibility of women and offers a look at the Second World War from a female point of view, did not say anything else.
“A lot of stories have been told about the male experience during the war or the post-war period. And we didn’t really explore what it meant to be a woman at that time,” she lamented.
War in the cinema
Added late to the competition, “NAZA”, by Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, caused a shock wave on the Lido.
The only documentary in competition for the Golden Lion, the film recounts Israel’s mass surveillance of the population in Gaza and the calculated massacre of innocent civilians.
“We wanted to hear, in as much detail as possible, what the killing mechanisms in Gaza looked like, how they worked,” investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, who interviewed 24 soldiers or intelligence officers, all anonymous, told AFP for his film.
Another feature film on the theme of war, “Mr. Nelson Did You Kill People?” looks back on the life of Allen Nelson, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress all his life, due to what he did and saw during the war. He then devoted his life to witnessing and defending the pacifist cause.
