Fred Wiseman, Amy Berg docs headed to Venice

Frederick Wiseman's 40th documentary and Amy Berg's film on musician Janis Joplin (pictured) are among a slate of films headed to the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
July 29, 2015


Frederick Wiseman‘s 40th documentary In Jackson Heights and Amy Berg‘s film on musician Janis Joplin (pictured) are among a slate of docs headed to the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.

The festival’s official sections include the in-competition Venezia 72, the Out of Competition offerings, an international-focused Orizzonti (Horizons), and Venice Classics, which features restored classic narrative films and documentaries on cinema.

Venice, which had the world premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s in-competition doc The Look of Silence last year, will this year host the world premiere of Petition director Zhao Liang’s Behemoth – the only doc screening in-competition.

The Out of Competition section, meanwhile, holds a number of documentary premieres, including that of Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma, on director Brian de Palma. The doc is the first non-fiction project for Baumbach, who is known for such feature films as The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha.

Other Out of Competition titles are Evgeny Afineevsky’s Winter on Fire; and Deliver Us from Evil director Amy Berg’s Janis, which was in May shopped at the Cannes Film Festival.

Also screening out of competition are Home filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Human; Maidan director Sergei Loznitsa’s The Event; Fli uomini di questa città io non li conosco from Franco Maresco, whose 2014 doc entry Belluscone. Una storia siciliana won a special jury prize at Venice; Gianfranco Pannone’s L’escercito più piccolo del mondo; and Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights, for which the filmmaker launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this summer.

Elsewhere, the Horizons section features Cristina Picci’s collection of doc shorts, Champs des possibles, while Venice Classics will include Venise (1910), Pietra Brettkelly’s A Flickering Truth, Andreas Horvath’s Helmut Berger, Actor, Simone Isola’s Alfredo Bini, The Unexpected Guest, Rinku Kalsy’s For the Love of a Man, Alain Mazars’ Jacques Tourneur le medium, Yves Montmayeur’s The 1000 Eyes of Dr Maddin, Steven Okazaki’s Mifune: The Last Samurai, and Valerio Ruiz’s Dietro gli occhiali bianchi.

The Venice International Film Festival takes place from September 2 to 12, overlapping with the Toronto International Film Festival – which begins on September 10 – by two days.

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