Saoirse Ronan arrived at the 83rd Venice Film Festival last night, debuting her first project as director at the prestigious film event.
Ronan’s film Paper Plane is competing for the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film. It is one of many hotly anticipated short projects debuting at the festival, including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Flesh Impact, starring Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn as Marilyn Monroe at different stages of the star’s life.
The film, for which Ronan also wrote the screenplay, centres on a defiant young girl staging a silent protest and running away from home until her disruptive father has gone, forcing her mother to decide whether to follow her or let her go.
In her Director’s Statement to the festival, Ronan wrote that the film was “a love letter to a younger version of myself, and a younger version of my mother”.
“I wanted to explore how a young mind tries to make sense of something beyond their control; how love is expressed in times of pain, and how self- preservation takes root when one has spent their life watching someone they love struggle to love themselves and others in a healthy way.”
After years of attending premieres as the star, always in glamorous red carpet looks, Ronan made a striking appearance at the festival in an understated navy gown.
Rather than shimmering blue satin or sparkling green sequins, as she has worn at past events, this custom Louis Vuitton gown featured a form-fitting column silhouette, with a thigh-high slit, long sleeves and a high neckline.
The minimalist design let Ronan’s fashionable micro fringe do the talking, alongside her minimal makeup look of thin black eyeliner and a nude lipstick.
She finished her look with simple silver jewellery, wearing mismatched earrings.