This Competition in Venice will be a first for the four directors whose films have been selected – even though Rebecca Zlotowski presented Planetarium there Out of Competition in 2016.
Four films that all revolve around the notion of family, how it sometimes implodes, how it often survives.
Other People's Children, by Rebecca Zlotowski, features Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem in a tale about a blended famiy.
Other People's Children
Actor-director Zem will also be in Venice to present his own film, Les Miens, whose protagonist is a man whose family life is turned upside down after an accident.
Les Miens
Athena, by Romain Gavras, produced by Netflix, is an urban thriller about siblings who are devastated after one of them dies.
Athena
Rounding off the French titles in Competition, Saint-Omer, the debut fiction feature by Alice Diop, takes as its starting point a real-life incident and recounts the story of a young woman who drowned her little girl on a beach in the English Channel.
Saint-Omer
Three other minority-French coproductions will also be presented in Competition and are in the running for the Golden Lion: L'Immensita by Emanuele Crialese, Love Life by Koji Fukada, and A Couple by Frederick Wiseman.
In the Orizzonti section, Jean-Paul Salomé will attend the festival to present his latest feature, The Sitting Duck, which allowed him to work again with Isabelle Huppert, who starred in Salomé's Mama Weed. Six years after presenting Orchestra Class Out of Competition, Rachid Hami returns to Venice with his second feature, For my country.
Meanwhile, in Orizzonti Extra, Sébastien Marnier (whose School's Out had its world premiere in the Sconfini strand in 2018, which has now been replaced by Orizzonti Extra) will present his third feature, The Origin of Evil.
More information about the French titles selected for Semaine de la Critique and Giornate degli Autori can be found below.
Click here for more details about French VR in the Venice Immersive sidebar.
The French presence in the juries and the awards
While Catherine Deneuve will receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, we should also mention the presence of Audrey Diwan in the Official Jury and Céline Sciamma, who is the president of the Giornate degli Autori Jury. French journalist Edouard Waintrop (formerly Artistic Director of Directors' Fortnight) will be part of the Orizzonti Jury, and producer Rosalie Varda is a member of the Luigi de Laurentiis Venice Award for a Debut Film Jury.
The French artistic delegation
The following French artists are already expected to attend this year's edition (subject to change): Isabelle Huppert, Marina Foïs, Dominique Blanc, Jacques Weber, Romain Gavras, Jean-Paul Salomé, Swann Arlaud, Ladj Ly, Alice Diop, Doria Tillier, Laure Calamy, Sébastien Marnier, Anthony Bajon, Alexis Manenti, Dominique Blanc, Grégory Gadebois, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, Sébastien Lifshitz, Pablo Pauly, Wissam Charaf...
Unifrance in Venice 2022
Unifrance is a partner for the first time of the Venice Production Bridge, which honors France as a guest country and presents, with the support of Unifrance:
- 12 French feature projects in Gap Financing, including two specially selected for the focus – out of 33 projects in total
- Six French immersive projects in Gap Financing, including two specially selected for the focus – out of 16 projects in total
- Six French projects in Final Cut, including two specially selected for the focus (one fiction, one documentary) – out of eight projects in total
Two round tables have been organized to highlight the excellence of French cinema professional's expertise and of immersive creation:
- Friday, September 2 at 4.15 pm on Venice Immersive Island, a round table focusing on international distribution of French immersive works, with Marie Blondiaux (Red Corner), Voyelle Acker (Small), Danielle Giroux (Astrea), moderated by Mathieu Gayet (XR Must): “How to Think XR Distribution Strategies From an Early Stage: French Experts' Perspectives”
Unifrance will also present for the first time the figures for XR exports in 2021 during this event.
Both panels will be filmed and broadcast live online on the VPB website. LINK
Also in this context, and with the support of the Ambassade de France in Italy, Unifrance is cohosting the Venice Immersive Island opening cocktail, "Meet the French Creators," which will be held on Wednesday, September 1. Unifrance also enables, in partnership with the XR Farnese-Medicis Residence, the first resident, Boris Labbé, selected for his project Mono no aware (Sacrebleu Productions), to be invited to Venice to participate in VPB activities.
On Venice Immersive Island, Unifrance will have a corner dedicated to meetings of French professionals and to the promotion of our immersive works, where the VR Immersive Experiences catalog, published by the Institut français, will be given a spotlight.
Unifrance is also organizing a second focus on France, in partnership with Cinecittà, the Italian Ministry of Culture, and Anica (the organization that brings together most of Italian film and audiovisual professionals). On Thursday, September 1, in the Italian Pavilion, Unifrance will hold a morning of discussions on the situation in France and Italy in the production, distribution, and exhibition sectors, in the presence of French and Italian professionals and institutions.
Another discussion will bring together Italian and French producers, as well as the CNC and the film department of the Italian Ministry of Culture, to discuss issues and problems related to the fund supporting the coproduction of French-Italian feature films, launched in 2019.
Last but not least, Unifrance will organize, as it does every year, a gala event in honor of the selected French films, to which foreign distributors, in particular, are invited to attend.
All the French films presented at the
79th Venice Film Festival
Competition
Out of Competition
Orizzonti
Orizzonti Extra
Venezia Classici
Short films – Orizzonti
Short films – Venice Immersive
Short films – Venice VR Out of Competition
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Semaine de la Critique 2022
Official Selection
Opening Film
Closing Film
Special Programs
--> Click here for the full Semaine de la Critique lineup
Giornate degli Autori 2021
OfficialSelection
Special Events
Notti Veneziane
--> Click here for the full Giornate degli autori lineup
