12. Queer Lion Award: films in competition

Synopses, cast & credits of the 10 movies in competition for Queer Lion Award 2018; calendar with the screening schedule during the Venice International Film Festival; names of the jurors

CALENDAR WITH THE SCREENING SCHEDULE

For further information: La Biennale di Venezia, biglietteria.cinema@labiennale.org

SYNOPSES, CAST & CREDITS

C’est ça l’amour (Real Love) by Claire Burger (France, 98’)
Forbach, East of France, today. Mario, a man without much ambition, except for love, is back to square one after his wife left home. He now must raise on his own his two daughters going through their adolescent years while going through some sort of a teenage crisis of his own. Frida, 14-years old, blames her father for their mother’s absence and she develops ambivalent feelings towards her new girlfriend. Niki, 17-years old, will soon leave home. Until then, she lives the good life. Mario can’t help but lose the women he loves. Yet they must all agree to let one another go. Can accepting to lose someone eventually lead to finding oneself?
Presented in 15. Giornate degli Autori

José by Li Cheng (Guatemala, 85’)
José (19 years old) lives with his Mother (50s) in Guatemala: a tough life in one of the world’s most dangerous, religious, and impoverished countries. José is her youngest and favorite child, and her life is church and selling sandwiches. José spends his days on crowded buses and in the streets delivering food. Resigned and aloof, in free moments he plays with his phone and looks for random sex. When he meets Luis, José is thrust into passion and pain and self-reflection that was previously unimaginable.
Presented in 15. Giornate degli Autori

The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos (Uk, Ireland, Usa, 120’)
Early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under her wing and Abigail sees a chance at a return to her aristocratic roots. As the politics of war become quite time consuming for Sarah, Abigail steps into the breach to fill in as the Queen’s companion. Their burgeoning friendship gives her a chance to fulfil her ambitions and she will not let woman, man, politics or rabbit stand in her way.
Presented in Venezia 75

The Other Side of the Wind by Orson Welles (Usa, France, Iran, 122’, 1970-1976, 2018)
In 1970, legendary director Orson Welles began filming what would ultimately be his final cinematic opus with a cast of luminaries that included John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Welles’s partner during his later years, Oja Kodar. Beset by financial issues, the production ultimately stretched to 1976 and soon gained industry-wide notoriety, never to be completed or released. More than a thousand reels of film languished in a Paris vault until March 2017, when producers Frank Marshall (who served as a production manager on Wind during in its initial shooting) and Filip Jan Rymsza spearheaded efforts to have Welles’s vision completed more than 30 years after his death. Featuring a new score by Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand and assembled by a technical team including Oscar- winning editor Bob Murawski, The Other Side of the Wind tells the story of famed filmmaker J.J. “Jake” Hannaford, who returns to Hollywood after years in self-exile in Europe with plans to complete work on his own innovative comeback movie. Although heterosexual, the director falls in love with the movie’s leading man. As stated by Joseph McBride, while dealing with the theme of homosexuality, the movie tries to explain Welles’ vision of the actor/director relationship, or between “man” and “God”. This film, says McBride, “is Welles’ 8½, a meditation on art and on what cinema is”.
Presented in Fuori Concorso

Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino (Italy, Usa, 152’)
A darkness swirls at the centre of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the troupe’s artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.
Presented in Venezia 75

Zen sul ghiaccio sottile by Margherita Ferri (Italy, 90’)
In a small village on top of the mountains, Maia Zenasi, a rowdy and solitary 16-year-old tomboy, is the only girl on the local hockey team and her life, on and off the ice-rink, is tough. When Vanessa, the beautiful and dazed girlfriend of the team captain, runs away from home and hide in Maia’s family lodge, Maia opens up for the first time someone of her peers: the days they spend together will lead them to break away from the roles that the community forced them to play.
Presented in Biennale College

La quietud by Pablo Trapero (Argentina, 117’)
After long years of absence, and following her father’s stroke, Eugenia returns to La Quietud, the family estate near Buenos Aires where she is reunited with her mother and sister. The three women are forced to confront the emotional traumas and dark secrets of their shared past, which played out against the backdrop of the military dictatorship. Long-buried grievances resurface and jealousies are revealed, all amplified by the unsettling physical resemblance between the two sisters.
Presented in Fuori Concorso

Bêtes blondes (Real Love) by Alexia Walther, Maxime Matray (France, 100’)
The former star of a short-lived television sitcom, Fabien, drinks too much to remember everything he does and not much surprises him anymore. When his path crosses Yoni’s, he is not surprised to discover, in the wake of this young, tearful, military man, the head of yet another young man, beautiful like a dream, a memory, a reproach.
«A completely alien cinematic space: an audacious and anarchic film that does not resemble anything else».
Presented in 33. Settimana Internazionale della Critica

Tchelovek kotorij udivil vseh (The Man Who Surprised Everyone) by Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov (Russia, Estonia, France, 105’)
The story of the film is based on memories of Natalia Merkulova’s, the film director’s, Siberian childhood, the village where she grew up, the people who surrounded her and the legends told in those places.
Egor Korshunov (40) is a Siberian forest guard who works in a local environmental company, fighting fearlessly against poachers in taiga. Egor is a great family man, respected by his fellow villagers. He and his wife Natalia are expecting a second child. Unexpectedly, Egor finds out that he has terminal cancer and has only two months left to live. No traditional medicine or shamanic magic can save Egor. Finally, left with no other options, he decides to take the last desperate step. He attempts to completely change his identity in order to fool the oncoming death, just like Zhamba, the hero of a legendary ancient Siberian epos, did.
Presented in Orizzonti

Kucumbu tubuh indahku (Memories of My Body) by Garin Nugroho (Indonesia, 105’)
Juno is just a kid when his father leaves him in their village of Center Java. Alone now, he joins a Lengger dance center where men transform their appearance and movement into female’s. But the sensuality and sexuality that comes from dance and bodies, mixed with the violent social and political Indonesian surrounding, forces Juno to move from village to village. If on his journey Juno gets attention and love from his dance teachers, his weird aunt, his old uncle, a handsome boxer and a Warok, he still has to face alone the battlefield that his body is becoming.
Presented in Orizzonti

JURY

Brian Robinson (UK), BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, British Film Institute
Rita Fabbri (Italy), Radio Ca’ Foscari, Università Ca’ Foscari
Jani Kuštrin (Slovenia), LGBT activist