A boycott would be unlikely to cause too much damage to this year’s programme on the Lido, considering that no Iranian films are up for the 2012 Golden Lion. Meanwhile, a Venice premiere is confirmed for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.
Iran is threatening to boycott the Venice international film festival next month over ongoing EU sanctions that damage its oil industry. The culture ministry’s Alireza Sajjadpur, who has responsibility for cinema, told the Tehran Times that officials were “currently assessing the situation”.
“Considering that the EU has imposed the strongest inhumane and illegal sanctions against Iran, we are naturally thinking of boycotting the Venice film festival,” Sajjadpur said.
The minister insisted work by Iranian film-makers was often the highlight of western festivals. A Venice boycott would, however, be unlikely to cause too much damage to this year’s programme on the Lido. No Iranian films are up for the 2012 Golden Lion, though a film by the US-born Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani will be in the competition, and Kianoush Ayari’s The Paternal House will screen in the Horizons section.
The Islamic republic has, in the past, jailed homegrown directors such as Jafar Panahi who produce films that do not fit its definition of acceptable. Sajjadpur said Ayari’s film – which follows an Iranian man from his teenage years to the age of 86 – was not yet cleared for screening in cinemas in Iran or abroad, and would need to undergo “corrections”.
Official censorship is not always entirely successful: Panahi, who in 2010 was sentenced to six years imprisonment and banned from making films for 20 years for upsetting the authorities, successfully smuggled out a film shot at the apartment where he was living under house arrest, on a USB flash drive hidden inside a cake. This Is Not a Film ultimately screened at last year’s Cannes film festival.
Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated new film The Master will after all be shown on the Lido next month. Deadline said the drama, widely regarded as being loosely inspired by the life of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, would screen in competition. It will also feature at the Toronto international film festival, which kicks off just as Venice is finishing, according to The Wrap. The postwar tale, which could be a key player come awards season, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a charismatic intellectual who launches a religious organisation and Joaquin Phoenix as the drifter who becomes one of his first acolytes. There had been some confusion over whether The Master would screen at Venice, after Variety briefly highlighted the film’s place in the competition then excised it shortly afterwards.
Other certainties for the Lido include the new Terrence Malick film To the Wonder, starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, which will premiere there before moving to Toronto. Fifty world premieres are also confirmed for Venice’s 69th edition, including the latest offerings from Olivier Assayas, Takeshi Kitano, Kim Ki-duk, Brian De Palma (Passion, with Noomi Rapace) and Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers, with James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez).