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"Everest" is directed by the relatively unknown Baltasar
Kormakur from Iceland but boasts an all-star cast, including
Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley and Josh Brolin re-enacting a
real-life disaster that befell several expeditions on the
world's highest mountain in 1996 -- filmed in 3D to boot.
It is not competing for the "Lion d'Or" top prize, but it is
just the kind of film that Alberto Barbera, the festival's
director, is looking for as an opener -- having scored a hit not
only with "Birdman" but also with the space thriller "Gravity"
the year before.
"The most difficult thing is to identify the film for the
opening night because it's a sort of a special category of
film," Barbera told Reuters in an interview. "It has to be
spectacular enough, not too violent because the audience of the
opening night is different from the rest of the festival.
"It's made of guests, representatives of the public
institutions, authorities, whatever, not cinephiles, so you have
to find a mix of elements that combine the many expectations of
the audience," he said.
Barbera is proud not only of grabbing "Everest", showing out of
competition, but also for luring a raft of prestigious films,
directors and actors for a festival that in some film circles,
before Barbera took the reins a few years ago, was said to be
sinking into the lagoon, with the rest of Venice.
Some of the top movies in the competition strand include Eddie
Redmayne playing the title role in the transgender film "The
Danish Girl", Israeli director Amos Gitai's biopic on Yitzhak
Rabin, "Rabin, the Last Day", and "Beasts of No Nation", which
stars Idris Elba ("Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom") and is based
on a novel about a child soldier in Africa.
Out of competition, the festival will host the premiere of
"Black Mass", with Johnny Depp portraying the Irish-American
gangster Whitey Bulger, and "Spotlight", starring Michael Keaton
as an editor involved in the Boston Globe's Pulitzer-Prize
winning investigation of pedophile priests serving in the Roman
Catholic church in Boston.
"Venice has been doing a really good job in the last couple of
years of focusing the lineup," said Scott Roxborough, a
European-based critic and reporter for The Hollywood Reporter
trade publication.
"It's not as big as the Toronto Film Festival, and it doesn't
have the sort of aura of Cannes or Berlin, which are just
massive. Venice is much more limited...but they do a good job of
balancing a handful of films that will be interesting later in
the year for Oscar nominations."
There are 21 films in the main competition strand this year, and
the prizes will be awarded on Sept. 12.
(Additional reporting by Mike Davidson; Writing by Michael Roddy;
Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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