The author’s version of “Andrey Rublev” will be shown at the Venice Film Festival

Tarkovsky’s film will be in the same competition with Parajanov’s “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”

August 30 opens the 80th Venice Film Festival, founded in 1932 by Benito Mussolini. It is still difficult to say whether Russian paintings will be presented there. There were none last year, although formally no one refused to consider our independent films made without state support.

The program of the festival will be announced on July 25. Surely there will be surprises in it. Actually, one already exists. A year ago, the film “Entirely and Completely” by the Italian director Luca Guadagnino participated in the Venice competition. This year’s festival was supposed to open with his new film The Contenders about tennis players featuring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Feist. But the directorate of the film review unexpectedly informed that it would be completed only in 2024.

The jury will be headed by director and Oscar winner Damien Chazelle, well known for his films La La Land and Man in the Moon, which had their world premieres at the Lido during the Venice Film Festival in different years. The judging panel included directors Jane Campion, Martin McDonagh, Mia Hansen-Lev, Gabriela Mainetti, Santiago Mitre, Laura Poitras, actors Saleh Bakri and Shu Qi.

French director Alice Diop, who won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last year for Saint-Omer, will now head the debut jury herself. She will have to choose the best picture from the first works of novice filmmakers presented in various competitive programs. Once “The Lion of the Future” in Venice received the debut film “Return” by Andrei Zvyagintsev.

For his contribution to world cinema, the honorary “Golden Lions” will be awarded to the Italian director Liliana Cavani, known to everyone from the film “The Night Porter”. She turned 90 in January. The second winner will be 61-year-old Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chu Wai, who starred in In the Mood for Love, Hero, and Chungking Express.

The program “Venetian Classics” included a restored version of “Andrei Rublev” by Andrei Tarkovsky (USSR, 1966). The restoration was carried out by the Andrey Tarkovsky International Institute. The director’s son, Andrei Tarkovsky Jr., who lives in Florence, has already announced the author’s version, the running time of which was 191 minutes. The well-known Mosfilm version was 175 minutes long. It was she who, already in a restored form, was shown at world festivals. Interest in the new version is also fueled by the history of the movement of Andrei Rublev’s Trinity, which the compilers of the program cannot but know about. “Andrei Rublev” will be in the same competition with the film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by Sergei Parajanov, which is not declared as produced in 1965 in the USSR, but presented from Ukraine. Its restoration was carried out by the Kiev Film Studio. Alexandra Dovzhenko. January 9, 2024 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Parajanov, who is considered a national treasure not only in Kiev, but also in Tbilisi, where he was born, and in Yerevan, where he died and was buried. In all three countries that were once part of the USSR, he worked, created, loved.

In total, the program “Venetian Classics” presents 20 paintings. Among them are “The Most Beautiful” by Luchino Visconti, “There Was a Father” by Yasujiro Ozu, “Creations” by Agnès Varda, “Days of Harvest” by Terrence Malick, “The Hunt” by Carlos Saura. The masterpieces will be evaluated by a jury of 24 students from Italian universities headed by director Andrea Pallaoro. The choice is always unexpected, and it is always interesting how the new generation perceives the achievements of the past. This tradition is ten years old. The task of the jury is not to evaluate the paintings themselves, but the level of their restoration. I had to see in Venice very modest results of this complex and laborious undertaking.

The Venetian Classics also traditionally shows documentaries about cinema and famous filmmakers. Orson Welles’ 1958 Portrait of Gina, about Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, who died in January 2023 at the age of 95, will be shown this year.