European Films

The border trilogy films, all three self-contained stories, were written by the director and French screenwriter Marie-Jose Sanselme. The first part, Promised Land, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2004, while Free Zone, the second part, was part of the Official Competition in Cannes in 2005. With Désengagement, Gitai will return to the festival on the Venetian lagoon for the closing part of his trilogy. It will be the 11th time in Venice for the prolific fiction and non-fiction filmmaker. 

Désengagement is a co-production involving France, Italy, Germany and Israel and, besides Binoche and Levo, stars Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, one of the protagonists of Gitai's Free Zone, and the living legend of French cinema, Jeanne Moreau. Both Binoche and Moreau have earlier won prizes on the Lido: Moreau was awarded the Career Golden Lion in 1992 and Binoche won the Best Actress Coppa Volpi the following year for her role in Kieslowski's Trois couleurs: Bleu.

Further titles added to the Venice line-up include three homages. First up is French documentary filmmaker Philippe Kohly's Callas assoluta, a French-Greek documentary about the famous opera singer Maria Callas that will be screened in the Orizzonti or Horizons section as a Special Event, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the diva's death. The festival will also screen three short films of the recently deceased Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and Autoritratto Auschwitz/L'occhio è per così dire l'evoluzione biologica di una lagrima, the last work of the experimental Italian director Alberto Grifi, who died April 22. 

The Venice Film Festival runs from August 29 through September 8. As each year, european-films.net will be covering the festival live with reviews from festival titles and red carpet photos.