The Italian model and actress, Eva Ricobono inaugurated 2 days ago the 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival introducing the international press and film industry to the opening film Gravity [3D] by Alfonso Cuarón. On the red carpet nothing less than George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.
By literally taking a few steps away from the flashy glamour of the Sala Grande, the festival experience discloses as a layered one, offering a wide variety of movies of any kind. The side section Orizzonti, for instance, starts with Wolfskinder (Wolfschildren) the first feature film by Rick Ostermann. He choses to focus on largely unknown historical events, such as the Soviet domination over Lithuanian and Prussian territories. The main characters of this coming-to-age action movie set in Lithuanian swamps and forests are wolfchildren, orphan kids striving to survive to hunger, diseases and military raids. “The struggle for survival by the wolf children can be understood as an example of the fate of many children around the whole world and for quite some time,” says director Ostermann.
In the same section the public finds itself irresistibly amused by the graphic yakuza gangster movie Jigoku de naze warui (Why Don’t You Play in Hell?) by Sion Sono. Apart from being an explicit parody of Tarantino’s Kill Bill, this is a praise to filmmaking and an elegy to the 35mm film medium, on its way to obsolescence.
What else will this 70th edition of Venice offer us in the next days? What masterpieces will we discover? Who will be the next celebrity crossing the red carpet? Stay tuned, follow up!
By Grazia Ingravalle
