21/07/2005

First films with powerful ideas, non-improvisational debuts which are the result of intense preparation. Once more this year The International Critics' Week - programmed for the Venice Festival from 1st-9th September - concentrates on the discovery of new trends and languages in cinema.
The Special Event will be the screening of the French documentary Bełżec [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Guillaume Moscovitz.
Seven first works have been selected, among them three European: the Irish cameraman Perry Ogden makes his directing debut with the docu-drama Pavee Lackeen [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the story of Winnie, "Pavee" little daughter, belonging to the Irish "Traveller" community who live on the margins of the towns and the system. The French film by director / actor Eric Caravaca, Le passager [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], describes the journey through the darker confines and shadows of adolescence, a drama of rare sensibility. The Italian Mater natura by Massimo Andrei follows the misadventures of a very handsome Naples transsexual, Desiderio, an eccentric and atypical film.
Other, non-European, films are the production: As’ by Jesœs-Mario Lozano (Mexique) which offers an astonishing narrative structure , with sequences which last only 32 seconds; Brick by Rian Johnson (USA), a teenage film written using noir techniques; Kuihua duoduo by Wang Baomin (Chine), in which a Chinese folk singer recounts the story of a young prisoner; Yadasht Bar Zamin by Ali Mohammad Ghasemi (Iran), hypnotic and visionary, expresses the crazy reality of contemporary religious fanaticism.

"This year’s selection seems to be in tune with the fears and concerns that we see around us", explains Francesco Di Pace, delegate from the Selection Commission. "The seven selected films reflect an existential tension and violence, but also political. The subjects deal too with actuality, whether it’s war or terror. It’s an often personal cinema, courageous. In this sense the Special Event at the Critics Week, the very beautiful documentary about the Shoah, Bełżec, positions itself at the limits of our memory, a reconstruction of the invisible debris of blocked-out horror ".

Finally, in collaboration with Author Days and Gan Assicurazioni, the Festival will offer a tribute to Alberto Lattuada, projecting Giacomo l’idealista Italian film from 1943.

(Translated from Italian)