Strong Iranian Presence at Venice Reflects Country’s Burst of Cinematic Energy

Alissa Simon Film Critic Overline: Hed: By Alissa Simon “Subtraction,” from idiosyncratic Iranian helmer-writer Mani Haghighi (“Men at Work,” “Modest Reception,” “A Dragon Arrives!”) is a tense Hitchcockian thriller set in Tehran, where a heavy, non-stop rainfall signals a lingering malaise. There, a young couple come across their doppelgängers. The film premiered at the Toronto festival. The idea for the plot grew out of the helmer’s long-ago trip to Southwest Iran to look at places where the Iran-Iraq war took place.

Houman Seyyedi’s darkly comic drama World War III has been named as Iran’s entry for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, taking place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 12th, 2023.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Gianni Amelio’s “Lord of the Ants,” a biopic of Italian poet and playwright Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law, has reached the top spot at Italy’s box office following its launch from the Venice Film Festival. “Ants” on Monday reached the numero uno position at the local box office roster with a €483,474 ($487,000) intake from more than 300 screens following its September 8 release. While far from stellar in normal times, this result is being hailed as an encouraging sign for the country’s still sagging post-pandemic theatrical sector. Amelio’s film is now ahead of Japanese anime pic “Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo,” which was released as an event on Monday for a three day run, and “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” which is at the end of its run, following it’s Aug. 18 Italian outing.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Iranian actor Leila Hatami, best known outside her country for her role in Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “A Separation,” will soon be back on international movie screens in Iranian-British director Mehdi Norowzian’s metaphysical drama “A Time in Eternity” which recently wrapped in Iran. “There isn’t one scene without me,” Hatami told Variety, speaking on the sidelines of the just concluded Venice Film Festival where she was a member of the main jury. The London-based Norowzian, who was Oscar-nominated for his 1999 short “Killing Joe” and subsequently directed Joseph Fiennes, Elizabeth Shue, Dennis Hopper and Sam Shepherd in the 2002 drama “Leo,” has since become a prominent commercials director. Norowzian recently returned to Iran to shoot this film, which is his first feature after two decades.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Paolo Virzì (“Human Capital,” “Like Crazy”) is in Venice where his dystopic drama “Siccità,” which means drought in Italian, is premiering out-of-competition. The innovative pic, which features an A-list ensemble cast comprising Monica Bellucci, Sara Serraiocco (“Counterpart”) and Silvio Orlando (“The Young Pope”), is set amid a protracted drought caused by climate change in the Italian capital where the Tiber has dried up. Virzì spoke to Variety about how “Siccità” germinated during COVID-19 and was shot amid tight pandemic protocols. Excerpts. You worked with novelist and screenwriter Paolo Giordano on the concept and the script for this film. How did the collaboration start?

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent With “Chiara,” Susanna Nicchiarelli’s portrait of Saint Clare of Assisi – the 13th century saint born into a wealthy family who at age 18 became a nun after hearing St. Francis preach – the Italian director completes her trilogy of female biopics, segueing from “Nico, 1988” and “Miss Marx,” which both launched from Venice’s Horizons section. With “Chiara,” she makes the leap into the main Venice competition. Nicchiarelli spoke to Variety about what drew her to portraying this prototypical feminist and directing “My Brilliant Friend” star Margherita Mazzucco in the pic’s titular role. Excerpts. What drove you to want to tell us this story about St. Clare?Well, first of all, I was always passionate about Saint Francis. I have a very strong memory when I first saw Franco Zeffirelli’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” I was at school when they showed it to us and this boy, this man, taking his clothes off in front of the Bishop. That was a very strong image. Francis’ battle speaks to us just as much today because it’s a battle for poverty, against social injustice. It’s about being on the side of the poor, of those who are different, and the injustices of a society in which very few have everything and then most have nothing. So, this was their battle. The medieval society was like that. It’s not so different from the way it is now.

Ben Croll Venice’s red carpet became a stage for quiet protest on Friday, as festival director Alberto Barbera and jury president Julianne Moore, among many more, held a somber walk-out to stand in solidarity with imprisoned filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Traffic on the red carpet flowed normally as attendees made their way into Venice’s Palazzo del Cinema for the world premiere of Panahi’s latest film, “No Bears.” And then, at 4:30 pm sharp, the doors to the theater swung open and a sea of people filed out. Moore stood with a delegation that also included fellow juror Audrey Diwan, Horizons jury president Isabel Coixet, and filmmakers Laura Bispuri and Sally Potter.

Venice jury head Julianne Moore joined activists from the International Coalition Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) in a flash mob on the Venice red carpet Friday evening to call for the release of Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director who was detained in Tehran in July.

Every film Jafar Panahi makes is an act of resistance. Currently in jail, the Iranian director has spent the past 12 years in and out of house arrest, banned from traveling or making films outside Iran and faced with numerous obstacles making films at home. That hasn’t stopped him.

Jessica Kiang Nobody emerges unscathed — least of all the audience — from Vahid Jalilvand’s highly effective, deeply unpleasant “Beyond the Wall,” a morbidly violent allegory for the effects of state-sponsored trauma on the individual that places contemporary Iranian society somewhere on the map between the sixth and seventh circles of hell. A strange combination of intricate, almost sci-fi-inflected psychological thriller, splenetic social-breakdown broadside and two-hander (torture) chamber drama, it is an exercise in bravura filmmaking applied to a story so relentlessly grim you might wish it were a little less well-made, giving you an excuse to look away. In his 2017 film “No Date No Signature” (which won Best Director and Best Actor in Venice’s Horizons sidebar), Jalilvand pictured a stratified society teetering on the edge of legality and morality; here, however, it has toppled entirely into the abyss. The only way is down, and the filmmaker is bringing you with it.

Sareh was one of two LGBTIQ women sentenced to death in Iran

Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (October 5-14) has announced its full line-up, including opening film Scent Of Wind, directed by Iran’s Hadi Mohaghegh, while Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai will be honoured as Asian Filmmaker Of The Year.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Francesco Zippel’s Sergio Leone doc, which premieres on Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, is the first portrait of the Italian master made with full support of his children Raffaella and Andrea. Titled “Sergio Leone: The Man Who Invented America,” the high-profile doc is premiering in the Venice Classics section for docs on cinema. It features an impressive list of voices holding forth on what makes Leone special for them. Among these are: Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Giuseppe Tornatore, Frank Miller, Darren Aronofsky, Damien Chazelle and Robert De Niro (see clip). But aside from Leone’s visionary talent as a director what emerges is that as his career escalated from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” through to his final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” Leone’s life was steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family. 

Anna Tatarska Arian Vazirdaftari, whose debut feature “Without Her” (“Bi roya”) was picked up by Berlin-based sales company Picture Tree Intl. and is screening as part of Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra section, is no stranger to international festivals. He was a part of Berlinale Talent Campus and his short films screened in Busan, Brussels and Cannes among many others. “I started as a self-taught filmmaker and only landed in film school many years later,” Vazirdaftari says. “My international experiences really helped. I got to know a more professional atmosphere globally, learned about what’s going on in film festivals, how films are selected and distributed.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Last year Andrea Scrosati – who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle – was at Venice with two films. This year Fremantle’s got six pics launching from the Lido, three of them in competition, which is a larger contingent than any of the U.S. studios or streamers.  Fremantle’s business model, which involves a cluster of companies mostly across Europe that they either fully own or are majority investors in, has been bearing fruit on their film side. Their output has grown “from 8 to 32 delivered movies in two years,” Scrosati says.  And the multi-pronged company’s Venice lineup – which includes Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità,” and Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter” – is a reflection of that.

Bindi Irwin is honoring her late father in the most powerful way.

Irina Shayk and Stella Maxwell are looking so chic on the red carpet!

The stars are stepping out for Il Ballo Della Luce!

A panel of international figures joined forces today at the Venice Festival to pledge their support for filmmakers suffering oppression, harassment and imprisonment around the world.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cairo-based film marketing and distribution outfit MAD Solutions has acquired rights for Arab territories to Venice competition entry “Les Miens” (“Our Ties”), directed by French actor and filmmaker of Moroccan descent Roschdy Zem. “Our Ties” is co-written by Zem with actor/director Maïwenn (“Polisse,” “Mon Roi”), who co-stars. Zem is a French cinema fixture, having starred in pics including “Other People’s Children” and directed several films including 2019’s “Persona Non Grata.” “Ties” is a drama about family dynamics centered around a man played by Sami Bouajila whose personality changes radically after he suffers a head injury. Zem plays his TV presenter brother.