7. Queer Lion Award: films in competition

Cast, credits, synopses, pictures and of all the movies in competition for Queer Lion 2013; and the calendar with the screening schedule throughout the Film Festival

GERONTOPHILIA
by Bruce LaBruce (Canada, 85’)
with Walter Borden, Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Marie-Hélène Thibault
18-year-old Lake has a sweet activist girlfriend, but one day discovers he has an unusual attraction for the elderly. Fate conspires to land him a summer job at a nursing home where he develops a tender relationship with Mr. Peabody. Discovering that the patients are being over-medicated to make them easier to manage, Lake decides to wean him off his medication and help him escape, resulting in a humorous and heartfelt road trip that strengthens their bond.

PHILOMENA
by Stephen Frears (Uk, Usa, France, 98′)
with Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark
When former journalist Martin Sixsmith is dismissed from the Labour Party in disgrace, he is at a loss as to what do. That changes when a young Irish woman approaches him about a story of her mother, Philomena, who had her son taken away when she was a teenage inmate of a Catholic convent. Martin arranges a magazine assignment about her search for him that eventually leads to America. Along the way, Martin and Philomena discover as much about each other as about her son’s fate. Furthermore, both find their basic beliefs challenged.

VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA
by Emma Dante (Italy, Switzerland, France, 90’)
with Elena Cotta, Emma Dante, Alba Rohrwacher
It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sirocco is blowing pitilessly in Palermo when Rosa and Clara, a lesbian couple, lose their way in the streets of the city and end up in a sort of alley: Via Castellana Bandiera. At the same moment, another car driven by Samira, crammed with members of the Calafiore family, arrives from the opposite direction and enters the same street. Neither Rosa at the wheel of her Multipla, nor Samira, the old and stubborn woman driving a Punto, is willing to give way to the other. A wholly female duel punctuated by the refusal to drink, eat and sleep; more obstinate than the sun of Palermo and more stubborn than the ferocity of the men who surround them. For, as in every duel, it is a question of life or death.

PICCOLA PATRIA
by Alessandro Rossetto (Italy, 110′)
with Vladimir Doda, Mirko Artuso, Diego Ribon, Lucia Mascino
Two young women, a hot and stifling summer, the desire to get away from a small provincial town. Luisa is full of life, uninhibited, unconventional; Renata is dark, angry, in need of love. The lives of the two women tell a story of blackmail, of betrayed love, of violence: Luisa uses Bilal, her Albanian boyfriend, Renata uses Luisa’s body to pull the strings of her vendetta. Both want to leave the small community that raised them, among local festivals and nationalist rallies, exhausted families and new generations of migrants targeted by those still feeling threatened. Luisa, Renata and Bilal will run the risk of losing themselves, of losing a precious part of themselves, of losing the people they love, of losing their life.

JULIA
by J. Jackie Baier (Germany, Lithuania, 89’)
with Julia Krivickas, W. Lerch, R. Orzichovskis, Renate Lušis
A story of faith and disbelief. Of uprootedness and affiliation. What makes a boy from art school decide to leave home and live as a girl on the streets of Berlin selling her body for money? For more than ten years, photographer and filmmaker J. Jackie Baier followed transsexual Julia K. from her birthplace, Klaipeda in Lithuania, to her tough life on the streets as a hooker, outlaw and nonconformist who never signed any social contract.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS
by John Krokidas (Usa, 103’)
with Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C. Hall, Elizabeth Olsen, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Kerouac. Burroughs. Ginsberg. Who were they, though, before they became virtual icons of the counterculture movement? In 1944, Jack Kerouac was a washed-up college running back who had lasted all of eight days in the U.S. Navy. William S. Burroughs was a medical school dropout, former door-to-door insect exterminator and budding drug addict, hanging on the fringes of the New York bohemian scene after following a pair of friends from his native St. Louis, Lucien Carr and David Kammerer, to Manhattan. Allen Ginsberg was a nervous, straitlaced freshman at Columbia University, easy prey of Carr’s seduction games and his obsession with the charismatic Kammerer. This is the story of three future beats who fell in with each other, and a brutal murder that capped off their youthful partnership.

TOM À LA FERME
by Xavier Dolan (Canada, France, 95’)
with Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy, Evelyne Brochu
Tom, a young advertising copywriter, travels to the country for a funeral. There, he’s shocked to find out no one knows who he is, nor who he was to the deceased, whose brother soon sets the rules of a twisted game. In order to protect the family’s name and grieving mother, Tom now has to play the peacekeeper in a household whose obscure past bodes even greater darkness for his “trip” to the farm. Stockholm syndrome, deception, grief and secretive savageries pervade this brief and brutal pilgrimage through the warped and ugly truth.

EASTERN BOYS
by Robin Campillo (France, 128’)
with Olivier Rabourdin, Kirill Emelyanov, Danil Vorobyev
They come from all over Eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova… The oldest ones appear no more than 25; as for the youngest, there is no way of telling their age. They spend all their time hanging around the Gare du Nord train station in Paris. They might be male prostitutes. Daniel, a discreet man in his early fifties, has his eye on one of them, Marek. Gathering his courage, he speaks to him. The young man agrees to come and visit Daniel the following day at his place, with wholly unpredictable consequences. Daniel will have to learn to fight to defend himself and the youth from the violent reaction of the group, led by a brutal man who is determined not to loosen his grip.

L’ARMÉE DU SALUT
by Abdellah Taïa (France, 81’)
with Said Mrini, Karim Ait M’hand, Amine Ennaji
In Casablanca, the young Abdellah spends his days at home, living a relationship of conflicts and complicity with his father. In the city streets, he has occasional sexual intercourses with men. During a holiday, his older and venerated brother Slimane abandons him. Ten years later. Abdellah lives with his Swiss lover, Jean. He leaves Morocco and goes to Geneva, where he decides to break up and to start a new life alone. He takes shelter in a house of the Salvation Army, where a Moroccan man sings a song of his idol Abdel Halim Hafez for him.

3 BODAS DE MAS
by Javier Ruiz Caldera (Spain, 94’)
with Inma Cuesta, Martín Rivas, Quim Gutiérrez
Is there anything worse than being invited to your ex-boyfriend´s wedding? Sure! When it happens three times in one month, when you don´t know how to say no, when you are an awkward 30-something who loses it after a couple drinks, when the only person you can convince to be your date is the new intern, and when at one of the weddings you are up for a huge surprise, when it comes to the sentence “you may now kiss the bride”.

CALENDAR WITH THE SCREENING SCHEDULE

GERONTOPHILIA
Aug 28 | 17.00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Aug 30 | 19:00 Sala Giorgione (Venice) | Tickets
Aug 31 | 09:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 31 | 19:00 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Tickets
Sep 06 | 14:30 Sala Casinò (Lido) | All Accreditations

PHILOMENA
Aug 31 | 09:00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 31 | 11:30 Sala Perla (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 31 | 19:15 Sala Grande (Lido) | Tickets
Aug 31 | 20:15 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | Tickets
Sep 01 | 10:45 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | All Accreditations

VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA
Aug 29 | 09:00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 29 | 11:30 Sala Perla (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 29 | 22.15 Sala Grande (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Aug 30 | 09:00 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | All Accreditations
Aug 30 | 16:30 Sala Giorgione (Venice) | Tickets
Aug 31 | 21:30 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Tickets

PICCOLA PATRIA
Aug 29 | 19:00 Sala Pasinetti (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 29 | 22:30 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Press, Industry, All Accreditations
Aug 30 | 24h Sala Web (Labiennale.org) | Tickets
Aug 30 | 13:45 Sala Grande (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Aug 31 | 15:45 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Aug 31 | 16:30 Sala Giorgione (Venice) | Tickets
Sep 01 | 21:30 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Ticktes

JULIA
Aug 28 | 22:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Press, Industry
Aug 31 | 22:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations

KILL YOUR DARLINGS
Aug 30 | 22:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 01 | 16:30 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Sep 02 | 19:00 Sala Giorgione (Venice) | Tickets
Sep 03 | 19:00 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Tickets
Sep 07 | 17:00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | All Accreditations

TOM À LA FERME
Sep 01 | 19:30 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 01 | 22:00 Sala Perla (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 02 | 17:00 Sala Grande (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Sep 03 | 08:30 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | All Accreditations
Sep 03 | 21:00 Sala San Polo (Venice) | Tickets
Sep 04 | 17:00 19:30 22:00 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Tickets

EASTERN BOYS
Sep 03 | 19:30 Sala Perla (Lido) | Press, Industry, All Accreditations
Sep 03 | 21:30 Sala Pasinetti (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 04 | 24h Sala Web (Labiennale.org) | Tickets
Sep 04 | 14:00 Sala Grande (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Sep 05 | 15:00 Sala PalaBiennale (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations

L’ARMÉE DU SALUT
Sep 03 | 11:30 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 04 | 14:00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations
Sep 05 | 20:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | All Accreditations
Sep 05 | 21:30 Sala Giorgione (Venice) | Tickets
Sep 06 | 16:30 Sala Excelsior (Mestre) | Tickets

3 BODAS DE MAS
Aug 28 | 20:00 Sala Casinò (Lido) | Press, Industry
Sep 07 | 14:00 Sala Darsena (Lido) | Tickets, All Accreditations