23/07/2013 - For the 4th straight year, the parallel section of the Venice Film Festival will host the project “28 Times Cinema” and the presentation of the finalists to the LUX prize at the Lido.

L’arbitro (pictured), Paolo Zucca’s first film, featuring Stefano Accorsi, will inaugurate the tenth edition of the Venice Days (in Italian, Giornate degli Autori), that will take place in the framework of the Venice Film Festival from August 28th to September 7th.

The Venice Days, supported by ANAC and 100autori and presided by Roberto Barzanti, will present this year a total of twelve films in its official selection: three in special galas, two shorts constituent of the project Women’s Tales, and two special screenings, one in the “pre-opening” and the other in the closing of the event. All the first feature-length films will compete for the Lion of the Future Award, granted to the best first film in the Mostra. Meanwhile, all the European productions (or, mostly, co-productions) will compete for the Europa Cinemas Label (MEDIA Plus programme). Finally, the association of Euro-Mediterranean critics FEDEORA will award, for the first time, two prizes in the selection (one to the best film, the other to the best director or actor debut).

“For the first time in all these years, the European schools do not play a predominant role, as the Mostra brings independent talents from the Americas, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and East Asia” notes Giorgio Gosetti, Delegate-General of the selection. “Italy and Europe will count, as is evident, with representation in the selection, but today we see again the image of a culture in search of its own meaning and perspective, in a world divided between globalising temptations and ancestral nostalgias.”

In the official selection appear the following European films: Alienation, Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov’s first film, a dark fable featuring Christos Stergioglou, protagonist of Dogtooth, the winner of the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes 2009; La Belle Vie by Jean Denizot, inspired in a real story that deeply moved the French people; Koksuz (Nobody’s Home) by the Turkish director Deniz Akçay Katıksız; La mia classe, directed by Daniele Gaglianone, featuring Valerio Mastandrea, and set in the multiethnic Roman neighborhood of Roma Pigneto. Europe will also be represented by two films in the section’s special events: Julia, a German and Lithuanian co-production directed by the debutant J. Jackie Baier, and Venezia salva, a loose adaptation of Simone Weil’s tragedy that tells the story of the attempted pillage of Venice by Spain in 1618, directed by Serena Nono.

The Venice Days selection is completed by: Bethlehem, by Yuval Adler (Israel); Gerontophilia, by Bruce LaBruce (Canada); Khawana (Traitors), by Sean Gullette (Morocco, United States); Kill Your Darings, by John Krokidas, starring Daniel Radcliffe (United States); May in the Summer, by Cherien Dabis (United States/Qatar/Jordan); La reconstrucción, by Juan Taratuto (Argentina); Rigor Mortis, by Juno Mak (Hong Kong), and Siddharth, by Richie Mehta (India/Canada).

This will also be the first occasion on which the artistic collaboration between Venice Days and the Tribeca Film Festival will see the day, with the screening of the film Lenny Cooke, directed by the brothers Safdie.

Venice Days celebrates its tenth anniversary, as explains Gosetti, “by retaking from the hands of the European Parliament the torch of that Assembly of cineasts inaugurated in the Directors’ Fortnight, which, in Venice, will bring to the stage, in the first place, the authors finalists of the LUX prize (which was won last year by the Italian Andrea Segre with Shun Li and the Poet) and, in the second place, the young cinephiles of the project “28 Times Cinema” (jointly organised with Europa Cinemas and with the collaboration of Cineuropa). These latter, together with the directors and authors of cinema, will debate with the European representatives on the cultural policies that will be implemented in the Union as the parliamentarian elections of 2014 approach.”

(Translated from Italian)