The Venice film festival is the world’s oldest film festival and one of the ‘Big Three’ film festivals alongside the Cannes film festival and the Berlin international film festival. The big three are internationally acclaimed for giving creators the artistic freedom to express themselves through films.
South Korean director Bong Joon ho has been appointed as the President of the Jury, marking the first time a South Korean director has been picked as the Lido’s top juror. Jury has :
- Bong Joon Ho
- Saverio Costanzo
- Virginie Efira
- Cynthia Erivo
- Sarah Gadon
- Alexander Nanau
- Chloe Zhao
The following films were selected for the main international competition:
- America Latina
- Another World
- The Box
- Captain Volkonogov Escaped
- The Card Counter
- Freaks out
- The Hand of God
- Happening
- The Hole
- Leave no traces
- The lost daughter
- Lost Illusions
- Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
- Official competition
- On the job 2: The missing 8
- Parallel Mothers (Opening film)
- The Power of the Dog
- Qui Rido io
- Reflection
- Spenser
- Sundown
Milan: Pakistani Short film “Mulaqaat” has made it to the 78th Venice Film Festival. The 20 minutes short film will be screened at the prestigious film festival in Venice. In September, it will be screened. The announcement was made by Seemab on her Instagram page.
The short film will be up against Jane Campion’s The power of the Dog, Pedro, Almodovar’s Parallel mothers, and Pablo Larrain’s Spencer.
The 78th film festival will be held between 1st and 11th September 2021. It is one of the ‘Big Three’ festivals. The other two are Cannes and Berlin. It is also the oldest Film Festival.
Gul also expressed her happiness at getting a chance to be a part of ‘Cinema history in the oldest film festival’ in the world. The world’s oldest film festival is hoping to welcome back, Hollywood celebrities this year after a scaled-down 2020 edition, due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the cast members of the short films, Hamza Mushtaq also turned to Instagram to share the achievement.
“Thank you so much for this huge opportunity! Making me a part of this huge project and get to work with such an amazing team! JazakAllah! Proud of the dream team and glad to reach the finishing line!”
The director Alberto Barbera said that the quality of the films this year was higher than the usual
“The line-up featured several films lasting three hours or more, some disturbingly violent scenes and many stories with strong women characters”.
“It’s as if the pandemic helped stimulate creativity all around,” Alberto added.
The Power of the Dog, a Netflix production has been asked to show out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival but instead chose Venice, which unlike Cannes does not need a theatrical distribution for films competing for the top award.
Anti-Covid measures implemented last year, such as having the capacity of festival theaters to 4000 spectators, will stay in force as infection rates increase again.
