Robert Pattinson and Oasis Bring Star Power to Venice Film Festival

Martin McDonagh’s new film “Wild Horse Nine” reaches Venice with a dark CIA story shaped by guilt, regret and the 1973 military coup in Chile. The film receives its world premiere on Thursday and competes for the Golden Lion.

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I realized then that the story could be about one of the guys experiencing guilt and regret over all these things he’s done.

McDonagh said he wrote several versions before finding the story. One focused on a father and son, another on two actors. The project began to take shape when he returned to an historical event that had fascinated him since he was a teenager. “I realized then that the story could be about one of the guys experiencing guilt and regret over all these things he’s done,” he said. “It took it away from being a simple comedy to something much deeper and sadder.”

Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich play CIA agents who travel to Easter Island shortly before the coup. The film is one of the festival’s most anticipated entries, and it is scheduled for theatrical release later this year. McDonagh’s previous two films, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” both premiered at Venice and went on to receive multiple Oscar nominations, including best picture. “Three Billboards” won acting awards for Rockwell and Frances McDormand.

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The nicest thing is that the film gets attention.

Malkovich said he valued the film’s attention more than speculation about whether the role could bring him an Oscar after two previous nominations. “The nicest thing is that the film gets attention,” he said. He described “Wild Horse Nine” as a film that addresses the deaths of John F. Kennedy and the Chilean coup “with great humor” and with “grace and intelligence and a kind of fairness.”

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It’s a film that, with great humor, addresses two very traumatic occurrences, the death of John F. Kennedy and Chilean coup, with grace and intelligence and a kind of fairness.

The production was among the few Hollywood films made on Easter Island, requiring cameras and period-specific cars to be transported there. Parker Posey, who plays Rockwell’s wife, flew in for off-camera phone scenes and called it “a mystical place.” Steve Buscemi, another newcomer to McDonagh’s films, said he had “practically stalked” the director at an earlier Venice festival to ask for a collaboration. At the center of the film is the strained relationship between Rockwell’s Lee and Malkovich’s Chris, who becomes increasingly agitated, prickly and forgetful under the weight of the historical events he has covertly helped shape.

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What a mystical place.