We announced it last month: here comes Venice time. The Venice Film Festival, which contends with Cannes for the role of the most important festival in the world, is celebrating its 81st edition, the 13th consecutive under Alberto Barbera, the artistic director who year after year has made it the resounding world stage on auteur cinema that it currently is, anticipating trends, discovering authors, reviving protagonists, opening up to major restorations and the future of the Immersive, all the way to television series.
A great opportunity, which should not be wasted. Because it is from Venice that the taste novelties and successes of quality cinema have started in recent years. Almost always, also of ours. That is why in the September issue of Ciak we have chosen to devote a good 40 pages to the Venetian festival: we tell you about its films, faces, secrets, curiosities. Then we move on to what’s new in theaters, interviews with major film stars, set visits, previews of what we will see, reviews of newly released titles. In September, the first titles from the 81st Venice Film Festival land in theaters, starting with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, where the demon played by Michael Keaton returns (joined by many other stars), and continuing with Italy’s comedy La scommessa (with Carlo Buccirosso and Lino Musella, at Venice Days), Francesca Comencini’s autobiographical Il tempo che ci vuole (with Romana Maggiora Vergano and Fabrizio Gifuni, out of competition at the Lido) and Gianni Amelio’s historical Campo di battaglia (with Alessandro Borghi, competing for the Golden Lion).
But there are also Kirill Serebrennikov’s biopic Limonov (seen in Cannes), the new Transformers blockbuster, the unusual action comedy Thelma and the horror films Speak No Evil and The Deliverance – The Redemption. Also of note for our home cinema from Venice 2023 are the first feature film by acclaimed animator Simone Massi Invelle and the pair Carolina Crescentini & Giampaolo Morelli in Come far litigare mamma e papà.
Not to be outdone is the small-screen TV series, led in September by the highly anticipated second chapter of The Rings of Power, a spin-off in serial form of The Lord of the Rings saga. Also among the returns are Tutto chiede salvezza (Netflix), which tackles the sensitive subject of mental distress, and then the espionage drama Slow Horses (Apple TV+) starring Gary Oldman, the Sylvester Stallone of Tulsa King (Paramount+), the Lillo Petrolo of Sono Lillo (Prime Video) and the vigilante Queen Latifah of The Equalizer (Sky and NOW). Also for those in the crime mood, we have the Greek commissioner Kostas played by Stefano Fresi (Rai 1), the family of former British gangsters in the 1980s in The Crime Coast (Sky and NOW) and the mystery The Perfect Couple (Netflix), starring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning, Liev Schreiber and Eve Hewson. Not forgetting the wave of cinecomics (also) for the small screen, with Agatha All Along (Disney +) about the former WandaVision antagonist and Colin Farrell’s The Penguin (Sky and NOW), straight out of Matt Reeves’ Batman.
Ciak’s goal, even in September, is to transfer to you the buzz that the film world is experiencing these weeks. And that we hope will bring us stories that live up to our passion.
