2024-07-26 17:07:41
Three Czech films will compete at the 81st Venice Film Festival. Specifically, it will be the film After Party by the debuting director and screenwriter Vojtěch Strakatý, a work created through the so-called mixed reality Fragile Home of Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopuchinová, plus a Czech co-produced documentary by Slovak director Peter Kerekes.
The movie Joker: Folie à Deux will start screening in Czech cinemas on October 3. | Video: Vertical Entertainment
One of the most important film festivals, which annually awards the Golden Lion, will take place from August 28 to September 7. The main competition of the 81st edition will feature 21 works, including the highly anticipated superhero love story Joker: Folie à Deux starring Joaquin Phoenix and singer Lady Gaga.
“Millions of people on the Internet have seen the trailer, which reveals very little about the story,” said festival artistic director Alberto Barbera, according to Variety.com. “Also, I won’t go into details. Few can imagine what director Todd Phillips and the screenwriters came up with to tell about the changing fate of Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who is awaiting trial in a criminal asylum for the five people he killed in the first film, and that’s where he meets Harley Quinn played by Lady Gaga,” suggests Barbera.
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in the film Joker: Folie à Deux. | Photo: Vertical Entertainment
Another expected novelty of the Venice festival will be the film The Room Next Door by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, starring actresses Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino will present the Queer drama based on the novel by William S. Burroughs with Daniel Craig in the lead role, while Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín will present a biographical film about the opera singer Maria Callas. She will be portrayed by Angelina Jolie.
Nicole Kidman will also arrive as the star of the erotic thriller Babygirl, in which she will meet Antonio Banderas or Jean Reno, adds Deadline.com. Outside of the competition, Tim Burton will present the anticipated film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and the eighty-six-year-old French New Wave classic Claude Lelouch will bring the film Finalement.
Artistic Director of the Venice Festival Alberto Barbera. | Photo: Reuters
The audience can also watch the action comedy Lone Wolves starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt or the film The Brutalist by director Brady Corbett. It tells the story of an architect who survives the Holocaust and flees to the USA with his wife. The architect is played by Adrien Brody, the wife is played by Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce or Joe Alwyn also act.
Among the expected projects, Variety.com includes director Alfonso Cuarón’s television series called Disclaimer, in which Cate Blanchett played an investigative journalist.
Three Czech films made it into the smaller sections. In the Orizzonti Extra competition program, After Party by the debuting Czech director and screenwriter Vojtěch Strakatý will have its world premiere. The film tells about the carefree life of young Eliška, which changes radically when the executors come to confiscate the family’s house due to her father’s debts. The film was supported by the State Cinematography Fund in development and production with a total amount of 5.9 million crowns.
The short film Fragile Home by Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopuchinová is on the program in the Venice Immersive section, presenting images that mix digital and real physical elements. “Fragile home uses a combination of these techniques to transport us to the living room of a Ukrainian family that is faced with the decision of whether to stay or leave a home threatened by war,” says Jiří Vaněk from the State Cinematography Fund. He supported that project with a total amount of 4.4 million crowns.
The documentary It’s in the Stars by Slovak director Peter Kerekes is to compete in the Orizzonti section. It was created as a co-production between Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Croatia.
Outside of the competition section, a seven-part miniseries directed by Thomas Vinterberg, winner of the Oscar for the film Booze, will premiere. It’s called Families Like Ours and it was filmed last year in February and March in, for example, Hradec Králové, Hýskov, Bílina, Kladno, Modletice, Prague or the surrounding area. In incentives, the Czech Republic paid out more than 15 million crowns to creators.
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