The second Coffee with Venezia da Vivere recounts the second day at the #Venice82 Film Festival with three films in competition: Lanthimos with Emma Stone, Baumbach with George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern, and Nemes with the film Orphan. The program becomes exceptionally rich, making room for women’s stories, emotional journeys and the desire for change
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is the first Golden Lion winner to enter the arena, in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, and he does so alongside Emma Stone, the actress with whom he has also participated in other editions of the festival, with Bugonia.
In 2018, he made his mark with The Favourite, winning the Special Jury Prize and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Olivia Colman (later awarded the Golden Globe and Oscar). In 2023, at his second participation, he brought home the most coveted prize, the Golden Lion for Best Film, with Poor Things!, which then led Emma Stone to triumph at the Oscars.
He returns to Venice this year with the story of two young people obsessed with conspiracies who kidnap the powerful CEO of a large company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
While Lanthimos abandons the Gothic and Victorian atmospheres to transport us into contemporary reality, he maintains his team: Robbie Ryan as director of photography, Yorgos Mavropsaridis as editor, Johnnie Burn on sound and Jerskin Fendrix on the soundtrack. The cast, in addition to Stone, also includes Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias and Alicia Silverstone.
The Return of George Clooney
The most anticipated figure of the second day is George Clooney. This year he returned to Venice with his wife Amal nearly 11 years after their wedding celebrated in the Lagoon, sparking the interest of photographers and onlookers from their arrival last Tuesday, when the couple boarded the water taxi and Amal’s elegance in a butter-colored sheath dress captivated everyone.
Clooney is in Venice for the competition presentation of Jay Kelly by Noah Baumbach, at his third participation in Venice.
The film explores the changes that a famous film actor and his loyal manager must face during a whirlwind journey of unexpected depth through Europe. “Jay Kelly tells the story of a man who reflects on his life and contemplates his choices, sacrifices, successes, and mistakes” recounts the director. “The theme of the film is identity. How we play our part. Who are we as parents, children, friends, professionals? Are we good? Are we bad? What is the gap between who we have decided to be and who we could actually be? What makes a life special? Jay Kelly explores what it means to be oneself .”
Alongside Clooney, the cast includes Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Eve Hewson, director Greta Gerwig, Baumbach’s wife, and Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher.
The Third Film in Competition of the Day: Orphan
The third film in competition presented on the second day of the Film Festival is Orphan by Hungarian director László Nemes.
In late 1950s Budapest, recovering from the anti-communist uprisings of 1956, a Jewish boy meets a man who claims to be his father, but who proves extremely distant from the image he had formed of him based on his mother’s stories.
The background of Orphan stems from the director’s personal history, having grown up in a family that endured “the devastations of the Holocaust and the tyranny of the communist regime.”
The cast includes Bojtorján Barábas, Andrea Waskovics, Grégory Gadebois, Elíz Szabó, Sándor Soma, Marcin Czarnik.
Films of the Day in Other Sections
The program for the second day of the festival presents several sections.
For Orizzonti, the section dedicated to works representing new aesthetic trends, two films will be presented: Otec (Father) by Slovak director Tereza Nvotova, which transports the viewer into the intense whirlwind of emotions a man experiences while facing the multiple consequences of his mistake, while Il rapimento di Arabella by Carolina Cavalli with Benedetta Porcaroli, Lucrezia Guglielmino, Marco Bonadei and Eva Robin’s, tells, in the director’s words, of “a girl who finds a way to resolve her past, overcome regrets, calm anxiety about the future and forget failed expectations.”
Out of Competition will screen Director’s Diary, the over 5-hour journey that Russian director Alexander Sokurov conducts through the history of the second half of the twentieth century.
For Biennale College Cinema, Secret of a Mountain Serpent by Nidhi Saxena will be presented, the story set in a remote Himalayan town during the Kargil War of a woman searching for her own freedom and love.
Another women’s story, in the Venice Spotlight section, is told by Hijra by Shahad Ameen, which addresses the relationship between grandmother and grandchildren traveling together to Mecca. “With Hijra I wanted to capture the silent revolutions of women on the move and explore how freedom is understood across time and generations” recounts the director.
Three films presented in the Venice Classics section: Bashu the Little Stranger from 1989 by Iranian director Bahram Beyzai, The Delicate Delinquent from 1957 by Don McGuire with Jerry Lewis and the documentary Megadoc by Mike Figgis about Francis Ford Coppola and his project Megalopolis, featuring Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Shia LaBeouf and Robert De Niro.
Venice Days gets underway with Laguna by Lithuanian director Sharunas Bartas and La Gioia by Nicolangelo Gelormini, with Valeria Golino, Saul Nanni and Jasmine Trinca. The latter is a film about an impossible and fragile relationship between a teacher and her student, who works as a gigolo to make ends meet.
For the International Critics’ Week, the day features the short film Restare by Fabio Bobbio and the film Les Immortelles (Stereo Girls) by Caroline Deruas Peano.
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Article by Pietro Gallina (VeneziaCinema) with Lucia Pecoraro.
Photos by Rossana Viola. The portrait of Olivia Colman is by Massimo Peca.
