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Ukrainian, Iranian Docs, Kenyan Sci-Fi Set for Venice Days Lineup
Politically-charged dramas and documentaries from Ukraine to Iran, and from Mexico to Kenya will share the spotlight at the Venice film festival's Venice Days sidebar, which announced its 2025 lineup today.
The diverse program ranges from the section's opening night film, the autobiographical drama Memory Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu, a survivor of the war in Chechnya, who studies her traumatic memories in order to transcend and transform them via the art of cinema; to Spanish director Gabriel Azorín's Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes about two young men returning from the front who spend a day of confession and revelation in an ancient Roman thermal bath; to Memory of Princess Mumbi, from Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser that combines elements of sci-fi, mockumentary and animation to tell a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in the year 2093 after an A.I.-precipitated disaster.
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The 10-film competition lineup put together by Venice Days artistic director Gaia Furrer includes 2 Iranian films about exile. The documentary Past Future Continuous from Firouzeh Khosrovani and Morteza Ahmadvand, which follows an Iranian woman who fled following the Islamic Revolution and now can only observe her parents via the security cameras installed in their home in Tehran, and Inside Amir, from director Amir Azizi, which explores his own fears and doubts when considering emigration.
Venice Days' out-of-competition special events lineup includes several documentaries, including Who Is Still Alive, from Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff, recounting the experiences of nine Palestinian refugees from Gaza; and With Writing Life, from French documentarian Claire Simon, which uses the words of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Annie Ernaux, through readings of her books by French high school students, to form a portrait of the younger generation. The sidebar also includes the 9-film out-of-competition section Venetian Nights, which highlights titles from major Italian producers.
Italian director Gianni Di Gregorio, whose sleeper hit Mid-August Lunch won Venice Critics' Week's Lion of the Future prize in 2008, returns to the Lido with the comedy Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, in which he also stars as a retired professors whose placid and monotonous existence is shaken up by the arrival of his daughter and his rowdy grandchildren. The film will close Venice Days, running out of competition.
The president of this year's Venice Days jury is Norwegian writer and director Dag Johan Haugerud, whose queer love story Dreams, the final film in his Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy, won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale in February. Haugerud's breakout film, Barn premiered at Venice Days in 2019. Joining him on the jury are Italian producer Francesca Andreoli (Vermiglio), Franco-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem (Bye Bye Tiberias), Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fani (Timbuktu), and New York's MoMA film curator Josh Siegel.
Check out the full Venice Days lineup below.
OFFICIAL COMPETITION
Memory, dir. Vladlena Sandu (France, Netherlands) (Opening film)Gioia, dir. Nicolangelo Gelormini (Italy)Bearcave, dir. Stergios Dinopoulos, Krysianna Papadakis (Greece, UK)Short Summer, dir. Nastia Korkia (Germany, France, Serbia)A Sad and Beautiful World, dir. Cyril Aris (Lebanon, USA, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar)Past Future Continuous, dir. Firouzeh Khosrovani, Morteza Ahmadvand (Iran, Norway, Italy)Memory of Princess Mumbi, dir. Damien Hauser (Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland)Vainilla, dir. Mayra Hermosillo (Mexico)Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, dir. Gabriel Azorín (Spain, Portugal)Inside Amir, dir. Amir Azizi (Iran) Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, dir. Gianni Di Gregorio (Italy, France) (Closing film, out of competition)
SPECIAL EVENTS
Laguna, dir. Sharunas Bartas (Lithuania, France)Writing Life – Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students, dir. Claire Simon (France)I Want Her Dead, dir. Gianluca Matarrese (Italy)Who Is Still Alive, dir. Nicolas Wadimoff (Switzerland, France)Do You Love Me, dir. Lana Daher (France)
NOTTI VENEZIANE (Venetian Nights)
6:06, dir. Tekla Taidelli (Italy)Amata, dir. Elisa Amoruso (Italy)Confession – How I found out I wouldn't make the revolution, dir. Bonifacio Angius (Italy, Poland)A near thing, dir. Loris Nese (Italy)Dom, dir. Massimiliano Battistella (Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina)A State Film, dir. Roland Sejko (Italy)Full speed backward!, dir. Antonio Morabito (Italy)Life Beyond the Pine Curtain – America the Invisible, dir. Giovanni Troilo (Italy)Toni, my father, dir. Anna Negri (Italy)
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