(First of a two-part series on the women filmmakers in the 79^th Venice International Film Festival)

Filmmaking is such a competitive field that we herald the women who share their cinematic vision without any excuses and qualms.

These are women who we boldly call “film daredevils” as they juggle homemaking, motherhood, marriage, relationships, and social expectations and still march on and shine in the time-demanding task or labor of love called “filmmaking.”

The 79^th Venice International Film Festival, which will be held this year at the Lido from August 31 to September 10, will showcase both competing and out-of-competition films from all over the world.

Julianne Moore leads the jury this year as president. Catherine Deneuve and Paul Schrader will receive special lifetime achievement Golden Lions awards.

This year, a total of 21 films are eligible for the Golden Lion award, La Biennale di Venezia’s highest honor. Five movies – 23% of the slate – are by women directors. It was 24% last year.

We put together a list of the female filmmakers in competition, out of competition, Horizons, and Horizons Extra. Here are their statements and thoughts about their films from the festival program.

In Competition

 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – Laura Poitras

Growing up, Laura Poitras first wanted to be a chef but then lost interest. Instead, she studied at the San Francisco Art Institute with experimental filmmakers Ernie Gehr and Janis Crystal Lipzin. She then moved to New York to pursue filmmaking.

Poitras’ documentary entry, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, is about the internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin whose fight to hold the Sackler family and their Purdue Pharma accountable for the opioid epidemic is told through her slideshows, intimate dialogue, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage.

Poitras said, “I was first drawn to the present-day horror story of a billionaire family knowingly creating an epidemic, and then funneling money into museums in exchange for tax write-offs and naming galleries. But as we [she and Goldin] talked, I realized this was only one part of the story I wanted to tell, and that the core of the film is Nan’s art, photography, and the legacies of her friends and sister Barbara. A legacy of people escaping America.”

 

Chiara – Susanna Nicchiarelli

 

The 47-year-old director-screenwriter-actress from Rome, Italy, who has an undergrad and a Ph.D. in Philosophy as well as a directing degree, had written scripts for several short films and documentaries before she made her first feature film Cosmonaut which was acclaimed in 2009 at the Venice International Film Festival. She gained a nomination as best new director for the David di Donatello Awards and the Nastri d’Argento Awards.

Nicchiarelli’s fifth feature, Chiara, set in Assisi in 1211, tells the story of 18-year-old Chiara who runs away from home to join her friend Francesco and from that moment on, her life changes forever. With charisma and conviction, she breaks free from her family’s constraints and stands up to the Pope himself. She fights for herself, for the women who join her, and for her dream of freedom. It tells the story of St. Clare of Assisi and her revolution.

Nicchiarelli explained why Francesco and Chiara’s stories are really exciting. “To rediscover the political, other than spiritual, dimension of their ‘radical’ lives – the choice of poverty, of life at the margins of an unfair society, the dream and foundation of a community life without any hierarchy or power division – makes us realize, while we question the mysteries of faith and religion, the impact that Franciscan beliefs and practices have had on secular thought. The story of Chiara’s life, unknown to many, offers us the energy of a rebirth, the contagious enthusiasm of youth, but also carries the tragic nature of a revolution, of any revolution worthy of the name.”

 

Les enfants des autres (Other People’s Children) – Rebecca Zlotowski

 

The 42-year-old French filmmaker began her career as a screenwriter. She wrote several screenplays for several short films until she made her directorial debut with the Lea Seydoux film, Belle Epine, at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Zlotowki’s eighth feature film is about Rachel, a 40-year-old woman who has no children and grows close to her new boyfriend’s four-year-old daughter, Leila. She begins to wonder if she wants or is even able to have, children of her own.

Zlotowski shared about her film, “A childless 40-year-old woman falls in love with a single father. As she tries to find a place in his family, she becomes aware of her own desire to start her own. Traditionally a secondary character, sometimes just an extra, she must fade away with their love affair. Why has this woman, living through a seemingly common experience – one I have myself lived through – never been a cinematic heroine? With Les enfants des autres, I wanted to simply make the film I needed to see, thinking that perhaps others might need to see it, too.”

 

Saint Omer – Alice Diop

 

Born to Senegalese parents, Alice Diop is a documentarian who was raised in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris. Saint Omer is her first narrative feature.

The French film is about a young pregnant novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach to be swept away by the tide. Rama hopes to turn the tragic event into a modern-day retelling of Medea.

Diop said, “In June 2016, I attended the trial of a woman who killed her baby daughter by dropping her off at high tide on a beach in France. I imagined that she wanted to offer her to the ‘sea,’ a more powerful ‘mother’ than she could be.

“Inspired by a true story but fueled by an imagination that summoned mythological figures, I wrote this film: the story of a young novelist who attends the trial of an infanticidal mother with the aim of writing a contemporary version of the Medea myth. But nothing will happen as she had planned. The opacity of the accused will constantly return her to her own ambiguity about motherhood. It is a film that I wanted to make to probe the unspeakable mystery of mothers.”

 

The Eternal Daughter – Joanna Hogg

 

Joanna Hogg is a 60-year-old British director and screenwriter, who began her career as a photographer and then went on to television to write and direct.

She said in an interview with The Independent that she ventured into film because “I wanted to make a film doing everything I was told not to do in television.” Hogg’s style is influenced by European and Asian directors such as Eric Rohmer and Yasuijiro Ozu, using extended takes and minimal camera movement.

The director’s seventh feature film, The Eternal Daughter, which stars Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, and Carly-Sophia Davies, is about an artist and her elderly mother who confront long-buried secrets when they return to a former family home, now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past.

Hogg recounted, “In 2008, I set out to write a film capturing something of the relationship I have with my elderly mother. She grew up during the Second World War and comes from a generation of women who kept their feelings to themselves, and who experienced loss but had no understanding of how to process the grief and sometimes lived full of regrets and guilt.

“I discovered that my own guilt, which is, of course, entwined with my mother’s, was stopping me from creating this story. However, something opened up two years ago when I set the story inside an eerie hotel, a realization that the ghostly and the personal, deeply felt could be intertwined.”

 

Out of Competition

In the out-of-competition category, there are only two feature-length films by women directors. That makes 11% women directors out of the 19 films to be shown.

 

Fiction Category

 

Don’t Worry Darling – Olivia Wilde

 

The 38-year-old actress-filmmaker Olivia Wilde made her film directing debut with the teen comedy, Booksmart, which won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature in 2020.

Wilde’s new feature, Don’t Worry Darling, is a psychological thriller that stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, Chris Pine, and Wilde in a supporting role.

It tells the story of Alice (Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Styles), a young happy couple in the 1950s, living in the seemingly perfect company town of Victory, California, which has been created and paid for by the mysterious company Jack is working for. Trouble begins when Alice becomes curious about her husband’s work on the secret “Victory Project” and cracks begin to form in their utopian life.

Wilde explained, “This film is my love letter to the movies that push the boundaries of our imagination. It’s ambitious but I think we made something really special. Imagine a life where you had everything you ever wanted. And not just the material or tangible things, like a beautiful house, gorgeous cars, delicious food, endless parties…but the things that really matter.

“Like true love with the perfect partner, and the best friends, and a purpose that feels meaningful. What would it take for you to give that up? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to do what’s right? Are you willing to dismantle the system that is designed to serve you? That’s the world, and the question, of Don’t Worry Darling.”

 

Non-Fiction Category

 

The Matchmaker – Benedetta Argentieri

 

Based in Italy, Benedetta Argentieri graduated from Columbia University where she earned an MA in Journalism and Politics. The journalist-filmmaker writes for both Italian and American publications and also directs full-length documentaries. Since 2014, she has been covering the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, while focusing on the Kurdish issue and the feminist movements.

Her documentary, The Matchmaker, is a portrait of one of the most infamous British jihadists, Tooba Gondal. When she was 20 years old, Gondal left London to join the Islamic State and gained popularity worldwide as the ISIS matchmaker after allegedly recruiting a dozen Western women to marry ISIS fighters. Between 2014 and 2017, she actively engaged in propaganda on social networks. As soon as ISIS started losing on the ground, she disappeared from the internet.

Argentieri found Gondal two years later in a camp in Syria. ISIS lost the war, and she was held captive by the Kurds. Gondal agreed to an exclusive interview. When she introduces herself, Gondal hints at the stereotypical passive woman who is in love with the wrong man and holds no responsibility for her actions. Her story version plays with the sexist view of women in the jihad, seen as accessories and not as active participants.

According to Argentieri, “The idea for this film came out of the need to speak of women, and in particular, the ones who joined the Islamic State, going beyond the stereotypes that paint them either as victims, if possible, of a man, or fanatics who exalt jihad. Thousands of women left the West to go to ISIS in Syria: a momentous choice that says a great deal about our society.

“Talking about Tooba, in all her complexity, has meant describing the central role of women in the Islamic State – women who have been mothers, wives, recruiters, fighters, and a great deal besides. And above all understanding that none of us is just bad or good: the challenge has been to get across the nuances.”

 

(To be continued in Part 2)