The fifth Caffè con Venezia da Vivere presents Jim Jarmusch in his Venetian debut with the episodic film Father Mother Sister Brother starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, and Cate Blanchett, and Olivier Assayas with Jude Law as Putin in Le mage du Kremlin. Out of competition, Pierfrancesco Favino plays a tennis coach, and Argentine documentarian Lucrecia Martel returns
The most anticipated film among those being presented today, the last day of August, in competition is Father Mother Sister Brother by Jim Jarmusch. The American director, known for works such as Down by Law, Night on Earth, and Broken Flowers, is in Venice for the first time. His film, as often occurs in his works, tells three stories set in different countries that address the theme of family in different ways through intimate portraits of relationships between parents and children or between siblings.
The first episode, Father, is set in the northeastern United States where siblings Jeff and Emily (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) visit their elderly father, played by Tom Waits.
Mother, the second chapter, is set in Dublin where a reserved writer (Charlotte Rampling) meets her daughters (Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett).
The third, Sister Brother, starring Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat, takes us to Paris where a brother and sister return.
“Father Mother Sister Brother is a kind of anti-action film, whose discreet and calm style is carefully constructed to allow for the accumulation of small details, almost like flowers carefully arranged in three delicate compositions,” the director states.
There are numerous long-time collaborators, both among the technical crew and the cast, starting with Tom Waits and Adam Driver, as well as Cate Blanchett.
The second film in competition of the day is Le mage du Kremlin by Olivier Assayas starring Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen, Jeffrey Wright, and Jude Law.
The film, based on the novel of the same name by Giuliano da Empoli, tells the rise of young Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) in the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. From the world of contemporary art, Baranov moves into reality show production and eventually becomes the campaign manager for a rising former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). To build the new leader’s image and shape a new Russia, Baranov works between truth and lies, manipulating information according to his needs. One woman escapes his control: Ksenia (Alicia Vikander), a free spirit who embodies the possibility of escape, far from this dangerous game.
The director stated that he believes “it is still worth exposing the internal mechanisms of lies and oppression,” a reason that led him to adapt the novel by Italian writer Giuliano da Empoli for the big screen. This story “is the testimony of an ongoing drama on the world stage, seen through a painfully human lens.”
Cinema and tennis, in the year of the Italian victory at Wimbledon
Out of competition, the fourth film directed by actor, screenwriter, and director Andrea Di Stefano titled Il Maestro will be presented, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Tiziano Menichelli, Giovanni Ludeno, and Edwige Fenech.
The film tells the story of a thirteen-year-old who, after years of hard training, partly to satisfy his father’s ambitions, reaches the opportunity to compete in national tennis tournaments. His father entrusts him to a coach (Favino) with whom the boy sets out on a journey. During this trip, a special relationship grows between student and master.
Di Stefano states that the film “is a tribute to imperfect, wounded, and big-hearted mentors. It is a journey through the pain of growing up, teaching, and human bonds.”
Lucrecia Martel returns out of competition
Former jury president in 2019, Argentine documentarian Lucrecia Martel returns out of competition with Nuestra Terra.
The film recounts Argentina’s strategies to deny territory to the Chuschagasta community, an indigenous community of the Diaguita people in the north of the country, struggling for recognition of their rights to ancestral lands against expropriation by landowners and discrimination. Taking inspiration from the 2018 trial of the assassins who killed community leader Javier Chocobar in 2009, Martel reconstructs the entire journey of this community from the 17th century to the present day.
Today’s films in other sections
For the Orizzonti section, it is the turn of an Italian film: Un anno di scuola by Laura Samani starring Stella Wendick, Giacomo Covi, Pietro Giustolisi, and Samuel Volturno.
The film addresses the situation of a girl who, having moved to Trieste, finds herself the only female student in the entire class for her final year of high school. Also in the same section, Willem Dafoe stars in The Souffleur by Gastón Solnicki as the manager of a historic hotel in Austria struggling to save it from demolition.
Out of competition, the screening of the TV series Un Prophete by Enrico Maria Artale concludes today, based on the 2009 film of the same name by Jacques Audiard, winner of the Grand Prix at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, nine César Awards including Best Film, and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
The story follows a young man of Maghrebi origin, raised in a disadvantaged environment and sent to prison for attempted robbery. In prison, the boy changes his life and attracts the attention of a mafia boss.
Today as well, the Venice Classics section offers three films: the restored version of 3:10 to Yuma from 1953 by Delmer Daves and that of Il magnifico cornuto from 1964 by Antonio Pietrangeli. The third film is the documentary Elvira Notari. Oltre il silenzio by Valerio Ciriaci.
For Biennale College Cinema, the documentary Agnus Dei by Massimiliano Camaiti will be presented, featuring the Benedictine Nuns of the Monastery of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.
For Venice Spotlight, Made in EU by Stephan Komandarev, set during the Covid pandemic in Bulgaria, will be presented.
International Critics’ Week presents the short film La moto (The Motorcycle) by Matteo Giampetruzzi, which is also competing for the Queer Lion, and the film Gorgonà by Evi Kalogiropoulou.
To purchase film tickets: labiennale.org
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Article by Pietro Gallina (VeneziaCinema) with Lucia Pecoraro.
Photos by Rossana Viola and Settimo Cannatella (portrait of Willem Dafoe and Alicia Silverstone)).
