Venice 2022: Last News

While she may not be a household name compared to the directors that she has worked for, Bonnie Timmermann’s IMDb reads as a decade-spanning watch list of some of the best films ever made.

Heavy on Loachian social realism and undergirded by the intensity and heavy stakes of a Safdie Brothers flick, Juan Diego Botto’s gritty eviction thriller “On the Fringe” — produced by Penélope Cruz, who also lends her name to the billing sheet — makes for hard-hitting stuff. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival today in the Orrizonti section, here’s a slice of agitprop that feels as timely as ever, with the energy crisis surging across Europe, the costs of living rocketing from shore to shore, and society’s most marginalized left to pick up the tab.  Anyone with half a heart and half a brain will be quickly won over by its interweaving stories, following three different people in the same Spanish city living under the cold, foreboding shadow of red-stamp eviction notices: though a little baggy in the second act, the first and final thirty-minutes are appropriately earnest and affecting.

With its abundance of flickery grain, exceedingly credible period production, and eminently authentic ensemble, UK filmmaker Georgia Oakley’s astonishing debut feature “Blue Jean” — which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week, no doubt primed to pick up a swath of gongs and laurels — could well be a relic exhumed from the back cupboards of a dusty film archive.  READ MORE: Venice Film Festival Preview: 16 Must-See Films To Watch Set amid Margaret Thatcher’s reign of terror in the late ‘80s, the little-known Rosy McEwen puts in a calling card performance for the ages as Jean, a closeted lesbian gym teacher torn asunder by the emergence of Section 28: barbaric British legislation that, until 2003, prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” across the country.

One doesn’t need to be religious to feel the impact of the words uttered by Pope Francis to never-ending crowds of faithful followers, a concept deeply understood by Gianfranco Rossi with “In Viaggio,” a decade-long chronicling of the travels of the head of the Catholic church across all corners of the world. Composed entirely of archival footage, the film grants rare access to the public life of the pontifical, not only from the elevated security of a pulpit but from the more democratic grounds of unpaved streets and vast public avenues.   The film opens with the following disclaimer: “In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war.” These very same issues guide the work of Rossi, whose two latest documentaries – 2016’s Golden Bear-winning “Fire at Sea” and 2020’s “Notturno” – deal with the haunting ripples of the refugee crisis and the war in the Middle East (in fact, Rossi and Pope Francis came together after the pontiff visited the island of Lampedusa following a watch of “Fire at Sea”).

As a fresh batch of boot camp recruits moves through processing, a name keeps resurfacing like some kind of curse — as if its mere mention is enough to call down the power of its wrath.  “Classic case for Eismayer,” one experienced soldier remarks about a smart-mouthed inductee, while another explains his fake-illness strategy thusly: “Just trying to avoid drillmaster Eismayer.” A legend in the Austrian armed forces, Sergeant Major Charles Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is equal parts bad-ass and martinet, yet what he is, more than anything else, is afraid, and it’s the exploration of this fear that serves as the backbone of “Eismayer.” A title card at the beginning of the film sets up the story as based on actual events — something that the brutalist architecture, bland color palette, and utilitarian nature of the military base setting reinforces right from the jump.

As a child growing up in the United States, you’re taught that betraying the country is a terrible act, punishable by death. Every morning, in most public schools, you’re forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which overtly puts your patriotism at the forefront of the day’s events.