75th anniversary Venice film fest promises 'surprises'

  The official poster of the 64th Venice International Film Festival(VFF)
that will run at Venice Lido from August 29 to September 8.[AFP]

Organisers of Venice's 75th anniversary film festival Thursday unveiled an intriguing line-up, with George Clooney, Susan Sarandon and Brad Pitt among the featured stars and top-flight directors such as Woody Allen and past Golden Lion winner Ang Lee.

"Our criteria were to select surprising and original films," the Mostra's director, Marco Mueller, told a news conference in Rome, adding that he viewed more than 3,000 candidates for the prestigious event.

Kicking off the competition on August 29 will be "Atonement" by young British director Joe Wright, based on the bestselling psychological drama by Ian McEwan and starring Keira Knightley, whom Wright also directed in "Pride and Prejudice".

Vanessa Redgrave, 70, plays Knightley's character in later years.

Other headliners at the festival, which will run until September 8, include Kenneth Branagh's mystery thriller "Sleuth" with Michael Caine and Jude Law, and "It's a Free World" by Ken Loach.

Lee of Taiwan, whose "Brokeback Mountain" took the top prize in Venice in 2005, will be back this year with a spy thriller, "Se, Jie" (Lust, Caution).

Welsh director Peter Greenaway will offer "Nightwatching," which revolves around Rembrandt's most famous work, while Quentin Tarantino stars in Takashi Miike's Japanese-style western "Sukiyaki Western Django."

Tarantino will also host a retrospective of spaghetti westerns featuring 30 examples of the genre.

All 22 of the films in competition will be world premieres, a feat achieved only once before -- in 2006 -- organisers noted.

Another 22 films will vie for prizes in the avant-garde Horizons and Horizons Documentaries categories, while 13 will be screened out of competition.

All but six of the 57 films will be world premieres, including an unusually large number -- 15 -- of the 19 American selections.

Adding to the English-speaking line-up will be 10 British films.

"American and English cinema offers truly original works that risk everything, incredibly innovative and what's more they are made with the stars of cinema," Mueller said.

Clooney stars in "Michael Clayton" by Tony Gilroy, while Pitt plays Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."

Contemporary life and war are common threads to many of this year's selections.

The war in Iraq inspired Brian De Palma's "Redacted," which portrays the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenager by US soldiers, as well as Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah," in which a career military man played by Tommy Lee Jones investigates the disappearance of his son, a soldier in Iraq.

Co-starring with Jones are Sarandon and Charlize Theron.

The out-of-competition menu will offer Allen's latest film "Cassandra's Dream," a drama set in south London, "La Fille Coupee en Deux" by French veteran Claude Chabrol and a new comedy by Japanese director Takeshi Kitano, "Kantoku Banzai!" (Glory to the Filmmaker!).

Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who won Golden Lions for "The Story of Qiu Ju" (1992) and "Not One Less" (1999), will head the jury of this year's edition of the Mostra.

All the jurors in this 64th Biennale di Venezia are directors, as was the case for the festival's 50th anniversary edition.

The world's oldest moviefest, launched in 1932, was not staged during World War II and several festivals were held without films in competition.

Jurors will include Catherine Breillat of France, Italy's Emanuele Crialese (who won the Silver Lion in 2006 with "Nuovomondo), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu of Mexico and Paul Verhoeven of The Netherlands.

Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci will receive an honorary Golden Lion to mark the 75th anniversary year of the festival.

Bertolucci, who directed Marlon Brando in the 1972 film "Last Tango in Paris", made about 15 films during his 40 years in the business.

US director Tim Burton will receive a lifetime achievement award.