Clooney and Burstyn to receive Honorary Golden Lion in Venice

The Venice International Film Festival will run from September 2 to 12 and will bring to the lagoon an international cast including Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Alicia Vikander and the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, according to what was announced by the artistic director of the Venice Biennale, Alberto Barbera, at a press conference.

George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will receive the Honorary Golden Lion during the festival, a recognition that brings together two different generations of American cinema.

The festival will open with Danny Boyle’s “Ink”, featuring Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch and Jack O’Connell as Sun editor Larry Lamb. The official selection includes Martin McDonagh’s western “Wild Horse Nine”, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, alongside Florian Zeller’s “Bunker”, a drama starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem — two titles that confirm the presence of European auteurs alongside a largely Anglo-Saxon cast.

One figure, however, points to a recurring imbalance in the selection: only one film out of twenty in competition is directed by a woman, Danish-Egyptian director May El-Toukhy with “Woman Unknown”. A number that, in a festival bringing to the lagoon names such as Cruz and Vikander in front of the camera, tells of a still wide gap behind it.

The news comes from two independent sources — Barbera’s press conference as reported by the trade press and the Biennale’s official statement — which agree on the main names in the program. It remains to be seen, in the coming weeks, how the choice to open the festival with a film dedicated precisely to a controversial media figure such as Rupert Murdoch will be received, told through the gaze of a director like Boyle, already a past Golden Lion winner for other works.

The full program, with screening dates and award ceremony times, will be released in the weeks preceding the September 2 opening.