Arab cinema is in the spotlight this year at the 79th annual Venice International Film Festival as a number of films from the Middle East have been selected as part of the lineup.
The festival will take place in September 2022 and so far, the Arab films that have been announced as participants include, Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan’s “Nezouh,” Algerian-born filmmaker Rachid Hami’s “For My Country,”and Iraqi filmmaker Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji’s debut feature-length film “Hanging Gardens,” among other titles from the region.
Alberto Barbera said, “It is a great honor to open the 79th Venice Film Festival with ‘White Noise.’ Baumbach has made an original, ambitious and compelling piece of art which plays with measure on multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical. The result is a film that examines our obsessions, doubts, and fears as captured in the 1980s, yet with very clear references to contemporary reality.”
The Netflix-produced film will be among those competing for the Golden Lion award, selected by a jury led by Julianne Moore.
The opening of the film festival will take place on August 31st 2022, and will open with director Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel “White Noise,” as announced by festival director Alberto Barbera earlier this week.
Written and directed by Baumbach, “White Noise” explores the concept of a modern American family through the perspective of a professor, Jack Gladney, and his fourth wife, Babette. Greta Gerwig, who has a child with Baumbach, stars alongside Adam Driver, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy and Jodie Turner-Smith.
