{"id":123638,"date":"2025-09-06T06:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/123638\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T06:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:19:07","slug":"humanity-is-facing-a-reckoning-venice-film-festival-shrugs-off-the-glamour-to-take-aim-at-politics-venice-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/123638\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Humanity is facing a reckoning\u2019: Venice film festival shrugs off the glamour to take aim at politics | Venice film festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most of its 82 years, Venice<\/a> has been perceived as the world\u2019s most glamorous film festival. This year was no exception: stars including Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law and George Clooney dutifully waved from canals and trooped down red carpets (although Law tripped while on a water taxi and Clooney got ill).<\/p>\n

But the films themselves struck a different note. Jury president Alexander Payne may have rebutted questions about current affairs during his opening press conference, declaring himself concerned only with discussing cinema, but cinema at Venice this year was concerned largely, it turned out, with discussing current events.<\/p>\n

The big hits of the festival were both nailbiting ticking-clock stories \u2013 directed by women \u2013 that tackled real-world situations of such tragedy and magnitude that many people shy from discussing them, let alone make a movie about them.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the festival, The Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a>, Kaouther Ben Hania\u2019s dramatisation of the killing by the Israel Defense Forces of a five-year-old girl in Gaza, earned a 23-minute standing ovation, as well as chants around the auditorium of \u201cFree Palestine\u201d.<\/p>\n

The film uses the real audio of Rajab\u2019s phone call with emergency call handlers, where she pleads to be rescued from the car in which she was trapped after Israeli tank fire killed the family members around her. During the January 2024 incident, the ambulance sent to reach Rajab also came under attack and the two paramedics on board were killed. Rajab\u2019s body, as well as those of her relatives and the paramedics were found 12 days later.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Venice, Ben Hania said: \u201cI just felt I had to do something, so I wasn\u2019t complicit. I have no political power. I\u2019m not an activist. All I have is this one tool that I have mastered a little bit \u2013 cinema. At least, with this film, I wasn\u2019t silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The film is an invitation to decide what to do about all these weapons\u2019 \u2026 from left: Idris Elba, Kathryn Bigelow and Rebecca Ferguson at a photocall for A House of Dynamite. Photograph: Riccardo Antimiani\/EPA<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s first film in eight years, A House of Dynamite<\/a>, put audiences repeatedly through the 18 minute period from the launch of a nuclear strike on the US until its landing, from the point of view of, variously, a soldier, military leader and the president (played by Idris Elba). Bigelow said she had made the film in an desperate attempt to kickstart conversations about a nuclear treaty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film is an invitation to decide what to do about all these weapons,\u201d she said. \u201cHow is annihilating the world a good defensive measure?\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the evidence mounted that cinema is increasingly acting as a quasi-urgent response unit to help audiences interpret a chaotic world. Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s latest, Bugonia<\/a>, stars Emma Stone as a high-powered executive kidnapped by conspiracy theorists convinced she is an alien intent on destroying Earth. Confirming the film as an allegory for inertia over tackling a climate catastrophe, its director said: \u201cHumanity is facing a reckoning very soon. People need to choose the right path, otherwise, I don\u2019t know how much time [we have] left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, No Other Choice<\/a>, the latest from Oldboy\u2019s Park Chan-wook, was a satire about a long-serving employee fired from his role in a manufacturing plant who feels forced to eliminate all competitors for a future post. \u201cWe all harbour that deep fear of employment insecurity,\u201d said Park. \u201cAnyone who\u2019s out there trying to make a living in the current modern capitalist society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing Vladimir Putin \u2026 Jude Law and Paul Dano in The Wizard of the Kremlin. Photograph: Carole Bethuel<\/p>\n

Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein<\/a> engaged with the ethics of AI, though he claimed otherwise<\/a>, and Law was in town playing Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas\u2019s The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/a>. While Law sought to downplay the film\u2019s contemporary relevance, his director was less abashed, declaring: \u201cThe film is very much about how modern politics, 21st-century politics, was invented, and part of that evil raised from the rise to power of Vladimir Putin in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such eagerness by film-makers for direct political engagement appears unlikely to wane. Announcing their lineup on Friday, the San Sebasti\u00e1n film festival director also issued a long statement calling for end to the \u201cgenocide \u2026 the unimaginable massacres to which the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is subjecting the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in London on Wednesday evening, Hugh Bonneville took an ITV reporter by surprise when he began his comments on the red carpet by saying: \u201cWhat\u2019s about to happen in Gaza<\/a> City is indefensible. The international community must do more to bring it to an end.\u201d He then continued: \u201cDownton Abbey\u2019s a lovely film.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of its 82 years, Venice has been perceived as the world\u2019s most glamorous film festival. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-123638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}