31/07/2003 - Spectacular line up for 60th Mostra with Bertolucci, the Coens, Greenaway, Allen & Kitano. Lots of Europe + 3 Italians in competition

“Round numbers are lucky” so the 60th edition of the Venice Film Festival (27 Aug-6 Sept) will have it in spades. For the number crunchers amongst you, we’d like to point out that it was no easy thing to sift through the 1,591 submissions (shorts, medium, and feature-length, plus documentaries), 255 of which Italian.
As he demonstrated last year, Moritz De Hadeln is not a man who gets discouraged easily. After pulling off an authentic miracle in 2002, this year’s landmark edition promises to be spectacular.

Not a single one of the numerous rumours in circulation since May did full justice to the programme that De Hadeln and his team put together for Venice 60. Rarely has European film production been so well represented: Italy has three films in competition (Marco Bellocchio with Buongiorno notte, Paolo Benvenuti with Segreti di Stato and Edoardo Winspeare with Il Miracolo). The French contingent includes Jacques Doillon with Raija and Bruno Dumont with 29 Palms; Germany is sending Margarethe von Trotta with Rosenstrasse and Portugal’s 95-year-old veteran master filmmaker Manoel De Oliveira will be making his fifth appearance on the Lido with Un film falado. The Asians include Takeshi Kitano and his story of an aging Samurai warrior in Zatoichi and Malaysia’s Tsai Ming Liang with Goodbye Dragon Inn. Then there’s South America and Mexico with Alejandro Gonzàles Iñarritu and 21 Grams.

Hollywood is traditionally wary of the Venetian competition, so they will crowd the out of competion screenings alongside prestigious Europeans like Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers) and François Dupeyron whose Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran will allow the Mostra to honour the star of this film, Egypt’s Omar Sharif.
Woody Allen will open the festival and the brothers Coen will present their Intolerable Cruelty. Jim Jarmusch is bringing Coffee and Cigarettes and its stellar cast that includes Roberto Benigni, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Iggy Pop. Another eagerly awaited title is Stephen Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen starring Sean Connery and based on the characters created by the genius that goes by the name of Alan Moore.
“Controcorrente” (Upstream) is just as promising. In fact, De Hadeln said it was on a par with the competition in terms of participating films. The list includes Ciprì & Maresco with the controversial Ritorno di Cagliostro, Sofia Coppola with Lost in Translation and Iran’s Babak Payami with Silence Between Two Thoughts.
De Hadeln was also keen to contradict the great Peter Greenaway who, aside from presenting the third episode of his Tulse Luper Suitcases at the Mostra, was planning to hold a conference about the death of cinema. “Cinema is better than ever!” said De Hadeln.

(Translated from Italian)