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🇮🇹 Italy /Culture & Society

Venice Film Festival confronts old and modern demons, crime and migration

From ANSA · () Italian

Translated from Italian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • The third day of the Venice International Film Festival featured films about war trauma, adolescent mental health, sexual abuse, migration and a notorious murder case.
  • Edoardo Gabbriellini’s La città dei vivi premiered in the Orizzonti section, prompting a dispute over screenplay changes with filmmakers Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo.
  • Competition entries included Cedric Kahn’s A Place To Heal and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, while Paul Schrader presented The Basics of Philosophy out of competition.

The third day of the Venice International Film Festival moved through a gallery of tormented lives: a Vietnam veteran haunted by violence, adolescents struggling inside a neuropsychiatric ward, two Afghans facing border-force violence on the Balkan route, and a young man whose ordinary life ends in a brutal crime.

Among the day’s most anticipated Italian films, Edoardo Gabbriellini’s La città dei vivi debuted in the Orizzonti section. Starring Emanuele Maria Di Stefano, Gaia Merlonghi, Simona Senzacqua, Roberta Mattei and Valerio Mastandrea, the film adapts Nicola Lagioia’s novel about the murder of Luca Varani, one of the most shocking criminal cases of recent years.

I immediately thought that the best way for me was to look for a narrow, intimate focus.

· Edoardo GabbrielliniThe director explained his approach to adapting Nicola Lagioia’s novel about the murder of Luca Varani.

Gabbriellini said he chose an intimate focus rather than trying to reproduce the full complexity of the book. “I immediately thought that the best way for me was to look for a narrow, intimate focus,” he explained, describing the film as a coming-of-age story interrupted by a tragic fate and centered on Varani’s life.

They did not share my view of their beautiful screenplay.

· Edoardo GabbrielliniHe discussed the D’Innocenzo brothers’ decision to withdraw their screenplay credit.

The adaptation also arrived with a dispute. The D’Innocenzo brothers withdrew their names as screenwriters. Gabbriellini said, “They did not share my view of their beautiful screenplay.” In a statement, the brothers replied, “Changes were made to the screenplay without our consent.”

Cedric Kahn’s A Place To Heal, in competition, enters an adolescent neuropsychiatric unit. Kahn said he moved away from a story set in adult psychiatry because that environment felt too harsh. Shinya Tsukamoto’s competition film Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? follows African American veteran Allen Nelson, whose experience of violence in Vietnam continued to torment him after he returned home. Paul Schrader also returned to Venice with The Basics of Philosophy, a moral drama shown out of competition.

Changes were made to the screenplay without our consent.

· The D’Innocenzo brothersThey responded in a statement after withdrawing their names from the screenplay.
About this summary

Originally published by ANSA in Italian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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