The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair opens the 69ths Venice Film Festival

by Vittoria Scarpa

23/07/2012 - It will be the Indian director Mira Nair who will open the 69th Venice Film Festival (29th August - 8th September) with her latest film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (photo), a political thriller with as its protagonists Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Live Schreiber, Martin Donovan, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi. The film, an Indian-Pakistani-American production, will be screened outside of the competition.

Adapted from the novel of the same name, Mohsin Hamid's bestseller translated into 25 languages The Reluctant Fundamentalist, tells the story of a young Pakistani working on Wall Street whose life is transformed after the events of September 11th as he becomes faced with the conflict between his "American dream", the international crisis and his country and family's desire to send him back home.

"A film that provides food for thought," confirms the Festival's new director Alberto Barbera. "Nair has achieved an exemplary film adaptation of a novel that deals with an actual theme, the fundamentalism of every inspiration and nature. With sensibility, subtlety and a remarkable sense of spectacle, the director follows a difficult choice of sides, inspired by the profound ethical and moral motivations that, even though confronted with reality, rejects compromises and aberrations".

Mira Nair, Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Film Festival for Monsoon Wedding, returns to the Lido for the fifth time, after having participated in competition in 1991 with Mississippi Masala, in 2002 out of competition with the India episode of the collective film September 11, and in competition in 2004 with Vanity Fair.

(Translated from Italian)