Swedish trio in competition, and a provocative film on “videocracy”

by Michela Greco

23/07/2009 - From September 2-12, the International Critics’ Week (SIC) section of the Venice Film Festival will offer a selection of highly Euro-centric titles, with seven debut films in competition and three out of competition.

And after last year’s success of Mid-August Lunch [trailer], the new hit of the upcoming SIC might well be Videocracy [trailer], a documentary on the power of television, the Italian absurdities of the small screen – among showgirls, Big Brother, Lele Mora and Fabrizio Corona – and the role of Silvio Berlusconi.

The film by Erik Gandini, an Italian transplant living in Sweden, is a special event of the SIC and will screen in partnership with Venice Days. It will be released by Fandango around September 4.

“A great reservoir of creative ferment,” as SIC Delegate General Francesco Di Pace calls it, Sweden will be represented in the selection by two further titles: opening film Metropia [trailer] by Tarik Saleh – an animated science fiction film produced, like Videocracy, by the Atmo Media Network – and Jörgen Bergmark’s A Rational Solution [trailer, film focus].

Italy is in competition with Claudio Noce’s Good Morning Aman, which features Valerio Mastandrea (who also produced it with Relief S.r.l.) and was made with a contribution of public funding and picked up for distribution by Cinecittà Luce.

Rounding out the European entries of SIC are Patric Chiha’s French title Domaine [trailer], Russian film Kakraki by Ilya Demichev and Czech/Slovakian/Irish co-production Foxes.

Other films in the selection are Jung Sung-il’s Café Noir (South Korea), Nader T. Homayoun’s Tehroun (Iran) and closing film Chaleh, by Ali Karim.

In presenting the selection, the president of the National Italian Film Critics Union, Bruno Torri, was not remiss in stressing his full support of the protest to reintegrate the budget cuts of the FUS Culture Fund. “This battle can still be won if we continue to fight united. The Festival will be a wonderful occasion to make our ideas heard,” he said.