On the evening of August 31, local time, the 79th Venice International Film Festival officially opened. Julian Moore, chairman of the jury of the main competition unit of this year's Golden Lion Awards, Catherine Deneuve, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award, Italian local actor and supermodel Lai Qiuhua who studied in China, and French actor Melanie Rolland, etc. , and the opening red carpet for the opening film "White Noise" including director Noah Baumbach, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.

On August 31, 2022, local time, at the opening ceremony of the 79th Venice Film Festival, Julian Moore, chairman of the jury, took the stage. People's Vision

Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Deneuve Focuses on 'Moving On'

This year's opening ceremony was hosted by Venice Film Festival Artistic Director Alberto Barbera with Spanish actor Rocío Muñoz Morales, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky After this year's Cannes Film Festival, he again "airborne" the conference site by video connection, calling on colleagues in the film industry not to "let go of Ukraine".

Zelensky

Later, this year's Lifetime Achievement Award winner and French national treasure filmmaker Catherine Deneuve took over the Golden Lion from fellow director Arnaud Deplechamp, and also won a standing ovation from the audience. Deneuve, who will turn 79 next month, humbly said he doesn't think he's "achieved much" in his life, but is still "extremely proud" to receive the honor.

In 1967, Deneuve attended the Venice Film Festival for the first time with the crew of "Beauty in the Day", and finally the film won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture. In 1998, she won the Best Actress Award for her film "Five Carat Love". At the media meeting held earlier, Deneuve specifically talked about the age of the actors. In her opinion, for an elderly actress like herself, the European film industry offers far more job opportunities than Hollywood. Take herself as an example, with two new films currently in production. "I just don't have time to think about the past because my focus is on the present and moving on."

Catherine Deneuve was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. People's Vision

The opening film "White Noise" received a mediocre response

After the opening ceremony, "White Noise" officially premiered in the world. It was said that the 136-minute length made many on-site guests drowsy, and after the screening, the audience standing up and applauded as usual, which only lasted for two minutes. More than a minute, definitely not very popular. The film is also an entry in the main competition unit. It is adapted from the novel of the same name published by Don DeLillo in 1985. It is set in a small town in the Midwest of the United States in the 1980s. It tells the story of an intellectual couple who encounter chemical substances. A crisis story that plunged into panic as a fatal event leaked.

On August 31, 2022 local time, the 79th Venice Film Festival, the opening film "White Noise" held a press conference. People's Vision

"White Noise" is Noah Baumbach's first directed literary work based on others' creations in decades. It is worth mentioning that the film was invested and distributed by the streaming media giant Netflix. This is the first time in the history of the Venice Film Festival that a streaming media work has been selected as the opening film, which is of great commemorative value. The production cost of the film is said to be as high as 80 million US dollars, but whether it will eventually lose money, I am afraid only Netflix itself knows.

"White Noise" stills

Baumbach's first work "Marriage Story" was also invested and distributed by Netflix. It also made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and received good reviews. After that, it went all the way to the awards season and won six Oscars in 2020. Nominated and finally won the best supporting actress, the little golden man can be said to have gone through a standard literary and artistic film awards season to successfully announce and distribute. However, when the new crown epidemic hit, the global film industry suffered a heavy blow, and major film festivals either closed down or changed their lines. This set of publicity and distribution routes that have been in place for many years - from the Venice Film Festival to the Toronto Film Festival to the United States The Telluride Film Festival's final impact on the Oscars awards season clearance process has also been completely broken.

Today, the movie box office market in North America and Europe has basically fully recovered. Although there is still a big gap compared to 2019 before the epidemic, commercial films such as "Top Gun 2" and "Jurassic World 3" that have been successful at the box office have also emerged this year. In contrast, the field of literary films has been slow to pick up, and topical works such as "Parasite", "Joker" and "Rome" before the epidemic have not yet appeared. Therefore, the industry is generally looking forward to this Venice Film Festival, hoping that its successful holding will lead to the smooth return of the traditional awards season, and even make one or two more phenomenal literary films.

In addition to "White Noise", Marilyn Monroe's biopic "Blonde", Mexican director Inarito's hometown tribute film "The Poet (or Fake Chronicle of a Few Truths)" and French director Romain Gavras' Athena, 4 of the 23 Venice entries in competition this year came from Netflix. That's in stark contrast to the Cannes Film Festival, which still says no to streaming.

In fact, as early as 2015, "Beasts of No Border" produced by Netflix and directed by Kerry Fukunaga went to Venice to participate in the competition. It was the first time that the three major European film festivals accepted streaming movies into the main competition unit. In the following years, Venice has basically had several Netflix films every year or participated in or participated in the exhibition. In 2018, "Roma" won the Golden Lion Award. Last year, "Canine Power" and "Hand of God" were also well-received in Venice. In this regard, Barbera, the head of Venice, said that Venice's selection criteria has always been only one: the quality of the film itself. As for the distribution method of the film and whether it will enter the theater, these are not factors that they will consider when selecting films.

The scale of the event has fully recovered to before the epidemic

The first Venice Film Festival opened on August 6, 1932, and this year is exactly ninety years old. Ninety years ago, in order to resist the strong impact of Hollywood movies from the United States and encourage Italian nationals to love the national pride of their native culture, Giuseppe Volpi, a wealthy Venetian businessman who served as the finance minister in the Mussolini government, funded and founded it. The first Venice Film Festival. At that time, a total of nine countries selected films to participate, and local audiences voted for the best actor and actress and the funniest film, the most touching film and the most creative film and other awards.

During the "World War II", the Venice Film Festival was suspended, and it was not fully restored until 1946. In order not to collide with the Cannes Film Festival in France, which was just born at the time, it took the initiative to postpone it from August to September. In the 1970s and 1980s, Italian society was in constant turmoil, with various bombings and assassination incidents emerging one after another, which also led to the suspension of the Venice Film Festival.

In addition to the 90th birthday, this year is also the first Venice Film Festival to be held after the nationwide cancellation of the epidemic prevention policy in Italy. In all aspects, it can be said that it has returned to the state before the epidemic. Although according to the official data released by Italy, there are still three or four times a day. Thousands of new positive cases of new coronary pneumonia, and the death toll has maintained a daily increase of around 100 cases. Not only did the red carpet ceremony return in an all-round way, but the theater no longer limited the number of spectators, and the mandatory requirement to wear masks was also lifted. According to Barbera, nearly 20,000 movie tickets were sold in the first few hours of ticket sales, and high-, low-, and low-end hotels, guesthouses, and homestays in Lido Island and Venice, where the venues were held, were all hard-to-find. situation.

Kim Ki-duk's legacy sparks controversy

Since there are many new works in the field of literary and artistic films, it is always normal for an important cultural platform like the Venice Film Festival to have disputes. It can even be said that there will be no controversial topical news. It doesn't seem normal. As a result, as soon as the list of entries for this year's Venice Film Festival was announced, media from all over the world raised different opinions on the selection of the late South Korean director Kim Ki-duk's "Call of God".

"God's Call" stills

On December 11, 2020, Kim Kidd died in Latvia due to complications caused by the new coronary pneumonia. In previous years, several female victims have publicly accused Kim Ki-duk of wrongdoing, including slapping an actress during the filming of the 2013 movie "Mobius," even though the court ordered Kim Ki-duk to pay 5 million won (approximately approx. 25,000 yuan), but it was only determined that there was a slap (Jin Ji-de confessed to this behavior, but stated that the purpose was only to get the actor's reaction and train her acting skills), as for the crimes of sexual harassment and other crimes mentioned by the victim, the court ruled that There is insufficient evidence to prove it.

Since then, Kim Ki-duk has brought several women who accused him of sexual harassment or even rape to the court on the grounds of defamation. Intended to damage the director's reputation. In short, the so-called sexual assault by Kim Ji-dok is a matter of disagreement on both sides, and the court is also suspected of being in a relationship.

However, the Korean entertainment industry at that time was affected by the Hollywood women's rights movement, including actor Cao Jae-hyun, who had worked with Kim Ki-duk many times, and there were not a few celebrities in the film and television industry who were sacked due to scandals. Kim Ki-duk has also become a filmmaker exiled from the Korean entertainment industry. Against this background, he went to Kazakhstan to film "Dissolve", supervised several young director works such as "Then You" in China, and finally filmed "God's God" in Latvia, a co-production between Estonia, Latvia and South Korea. call".

This time, the Venice Film Festival announced that "God's Call" was also among the participating films. The Korean film industry union organization directly sent a letter to the Hollywood media, condemning this practice. "The man is dead, but that doesn't mean the things he did, don't exist anymore. Kim Ki-duk never apologized to his victims, on the contrary, he took them to court, always denying his guilt. It left several victims with irreparable wounds and completely ruined their film careers," said Lee Sang-gil, president of the Federation of Korean Movie Workers' Union. The organization was established in 2005 and is the first trade union organization in the Korean film industry.

Subsequently, the Korean women's rights organization also sent an open letter to the Venice Film Festival, pointing out that Kim Ki-duk had been fined for slapping an actress, "but he had no repentance for his terrible crime, and instead accused the victim of deliberate slander. Here It is unacceptable to us that the Venice International Film Festival has decided to show his film in honor of him and not pursue his crimes of sexual violence."

In this regard, Barbera explained that in the face of Kim Ki-duk's posthumous work, their feelings are also quite complicated. "In a sense, it was the Venice Film Festival that first discovered him. In 2000, his 'Drifting Room' entered the Golden Lion competition at the 57th Venice Film Festival, which made him a world-famous one. The director of art films. Later, his works appeared in Venice many times, and he won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director ("Empty Room") in 2004. In 2012, his "Saint" won the gold Lion Award, "One on One" in 2014 also participated in the competition in the Venice Day Unit. After that, basically every new film of his will be sent, and we will all watch it. It can be said that it is out of a mutual relationship. Let's respect and trust each other. But relatively speaking, those films are far less interesting than this "The Call of God". About a year ago, several of his Estonian friends contacted me about this film. "The Call of God", because of his unfortunate death during filming, they are doing the rest of the finishing work. I thought at the time, such a film, we in Venice must not miss it."

In 2012, Kim Ki-duk won the Golden Lion, the highest honor at the Venice Film Festival for "Saint".

"Of course I know he's been accused of sexual misconduct. I don't know the details, and it's not up to me to judge whether it's true or not. It's a personal issue, I don't want to make a judgment, I All I know is that, as the last work that Director Kim Ki-duk could not complete during his lifetime, there must be many people who will be interested and want to see it. As the film festival with the most ties to him, let it meet you here with us, I think it still makes sense.”

"As for the criticisms from the outside world, I can understand very well. When we decided to let Romanski's "I Complaint" compete in Venice two years ago, we also encountered a similar situation. My statement at that time, I think today's Kim Ki-duk's question is equally tenable. That is, the Venice Film Festival is not a court, and I, Barbera, are not a judge, so I can't make any conclusions about someone's character. Here, I'm just a film critic , I only judge the quality of the films they send to our film festival. For example, this kind of work is a work, a person is a person, it is originally a part of the history of human art development, and it is inevitable. As I said before, everyone Know that the Italian painter Caravaggio was a murderer, but he was also the creator of some of the most important Italian paintings of the seventeenth century. What do you want us to do? Just because he killed people, take all his paintings from the gallery Take it away? I don't think so."

"In the eyes of critics, my current position must be very conservative. But maybe, in another 100 years, future generations will still remember those films of Polanski, but they have forgotten or forgiven them. He was accused of sexual misconduct 40 years ago. Anyway, this is my opinion. As a film festival, we don't judge this person, we only judge the art he made. Sometimes, excellent Artists do bad things too."