“Nonostante” and “September 5” will open the horizons of Venice

The 81st Venice International Film Festival has announced the opening night films for its Horizons and Horizons Extra competition sections.

Despitethe second feature film by Italian director Valerio Mastandrea (2018 To go up) will open the Horizons competition section on August 28. The Horizons Extra competition section will begin on August 29 with September 5thTim Fehlbaum’s historical drama about the 1972 Munich Olympics starring Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Ben Chaplin.

September 5th focuses on a sports broadcast crew who suddenly find themselves covering a hostage crisis when the Palestinian militant organization Black September infiltrates the Olympic Village, kills two members of the Israeli Olympic team and takes the other nine hostage. The teachers’ room Also starring is Leonie Benesch, who is making her film debut. Fehlbaum is best known for his science fiction films. Hell (2011) and The colony (2021).

September 5th was produced by BerghausWöbke Filmproduktion and Projected Picture Works, in co-production with Constantin Film and ERF Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion. Fehlbaum, Philipp Trauer, Thomas Wöbke, Sean Penn, John Ira Palmer and John Wildermuth produced the film. Republic Pictures holds the rights to the film outside of German-speaking Europe and is selling it worldwide.

Despite features Perfect strangers Star Valerio Mastandrea plays a man hospitalized with a long-term illness, content to be isolated from the world, who finds his comfortable routine disrupted by an angry new patient (Truman actress Dolores Fonzi) who refuses to accept her condition. Lino Musella, Giorgio Montanini, Justin Alexandre Korovkin, Barbara Ronchi and Luca Lionello co-star. Viola Prestieri and Valeria Golino produced Despite for HT Film, alongside Francesco Tatò and Oscar Glioti for Damocle, and Moreno Zani and Malcom Pagani for Tenderstories with Rai Cinema. BiM Distribuzione will distribute the film in Italy.

“Opening the festival means opening the film to the eyes and hearts of the public,” Mastandrea said. “I take it as an opportunity to unveil a story that has been mine for a long time and that I hope will become everyone’s.”

Separately, Venice has also unveiled this year’s poster (see below). Designed by renowned Italian illustrator and artist Lorenzo Mattotti, who created the last seven Venice posters, the colourful image depicts a woman in a bright red coat riding an elephant in the city’s legendary lagoon.

Mattotti explains that the image, inspired by a memorable event at the 1981 Venice Carnival, when a real elephant roamed the narrow streets of Venice, symbolises the festival’s role as a crossroads of world cinema, with the elephant representing “the memory and also the history of cinema: a party, a parade, a spectacle!”

The 81st Venice Film Festival…