The 79th year of the Venice Film Festival began on Wednesday evening, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke via video link to guests in the auditorium at the Lido in Venice, who called for a clear discussion of the war in Ukraine. During the opening night, the show’s organizers presented the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to French actress Catherine Deneuve.
Zelensky called on filmmakers from all over the world not to be silent about the war in Ukraine and to contribute to the fact that people are neither used to nor forgotten by the conflict in Ukraine. “It is necessary to speak about this war in the clearest language possible,” the Ukrainian president said.
He added that Russian forces had killed 358 children and kidnapped several thousand by August 29. “(The war) is a tragedy without the wonderful music of (Ennio) Morricone… It doesn’t last 120 minutes, but 189 days,” said Zelensky, who also spoke at the start of the rival festival in Cannes.
“Cultural personalities, directors, producers, actors and many others from different countries of the world belong to the same family of cinema: your opinion is important, your word is strong,” the head of state told those present in the hall.
This year’s festival is organizing several events to support persecuted filmmakers. On September 8, a day will be held in support of Ukrainian cinematography.
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Deneuve commented on the award, “It is with great pleasure that I receive this award from the Venice Exposition, which I have known and adore for a long time, ever since Luis Buñuel was awarded the Golden Lion of today’s beauty.”
The 78-year-old French cinema icon was referring to the 1967 movie in which she starred. inShe also mentioned other moments related to Venice, for example when she chaired the jury in 2006.
Curator Rossio Muñoz opened the ceremony with a monologue on film and fiction, recalling that this year the film festival celebrates its 90th anniversary. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among the guests in the room.
The cinematic part of the festival was presented by American director Baumbach’s White Noise, one of several films from the Netflix studio competing for the main prize of the Golden Lion. The show was attended by director and main actors Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.
czech footprint
This year’s festival and simultaneous performances will also present a number of works with a Czech footprint. Two films have been made in the Czech co-production, and will be presented in the prospects section. These are the film The Victim by Slovakian director Michal Blasek and Obzor by Romanian director Mihai Menkan.
Karel Kachyna’s 1970 film Ucho will be shown in the Venezia Classici category dedicated to restored films.
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The Czech animated film Tmání is included in the section of the immersive Venice, where works using elements of virtual reality are included, and the Giornate degli Autori show will present Common Failure by Romanian-Hungarian artist Kristina Grosanova, for which the script was written by Czech writer Clara Vlasakova.
The jury, led by Julianne Moore, will choose from among 23 films in this year’s main competition category. The jury will announce the winner of the Golden Lion on Saturday, September 10th.
“It is a great honor to be here. It is a special kind of joy to be invited to a festival that allows us to look deeply into ourselves and connect with others,” Moore said before officially announcing the opening of the festival.
