European Films

French diva Catherine Deneuve, recently seen as the regal queen in the comedy Palais Royal! and in a supporting part in the critical darling Rois et reine (Kings and Queen), will head the Venice Film Festival jury this year, festival organisers announced yesterday. The Gallic actress is a familiar face at the Lido, where Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour from 1967, in which Deneuve starred, won the festival's highest prize, the Golden Lion.

Some three decades later, in 1998, she took home the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her role in the Nicole Garcia drama Place Vendôme. The choice of Deneuve can be seen in the light of an effort to create a broader, more glamourous appeal for the festival by chosing an actress rather than a director as the president of the jury, a tactic also employed by this year's Berlinale, where Charlotte Rampling fulfilled that role.

 

The Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 30 through September 9, is the world's oldest continuous film festival and will celebrate its 63rd edition this year. As part of the festival there will be several events taking place in the historic centre of town, rather than on Lido isle that is the festival base. There will be screenings to honour the birth centenary of three Italian directors: Roberto Rossellini, Lucino Visconti and Mario Soldati. Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, with Anna Magniani) and his Golden Lion winner Il Generale della Rovere (General della Rovere, with Vittorio De Sica) will be screened in restored versions, as will Soldati's La provinciale (The Wayward Wife, with Gina Lollobrigida) and Visconti's Ossessione (Obsession), which stars the late Massimo Girotti as a tramp.  

The first world premiere has also been announced and will also take place in the city: Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Mozart's The Magic Flute will premiere with a gala screening at the restored La Fenice Opera House. Adapted by Stephen Fry and the director, the film's cast is composed of professional opera singers, including Joseph Kaiser and Amy Carson as Taminbo and Pamina, Ben Davis as Papageno, René Pape as Sarastro and Lyubov Petrova as the Queen of the Night.