Venice Film Festival to embrace Netflix productions

The 76th Venice Film Festival will feature three Netflix productions alongside Hollywood titles, embracing the streaming giant after the Cannes Film Festival excluded it for a second year in a row.

Among Venice's 21 competition titles, unveiled Thursday in Rome, is the Netflix-produced Panama Papers film The Laundromat,directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas.

Netflix will also present Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story,starring Scarlett Johansson and Alan Alda, as well as David Michod's The King,with the latter debuting out of competition.

The world's oldest film festival also features Hollywood productions like Todd Phillips' Jokerwith Joaquin Phoenix in the comic book classic role, as well as Brad Pitt in the sci-fi space journey Ad Astra, by James Gray.

Atom Egoyan is among the Canadians with films headed to Venice, with his dramatic feature Guest of Honour part of the competition line-up.

The competition also includes J'accuseby director Roman Polanski, a controversial figure in the #MeToo era. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in 1977 and fled the United States the following year.

Lack of female directors

Venice Film Festival Director Alberto Barbera acknowledged a lack of female directors in competition.

Only two out of 21 directors are women, while last year there was one.

"There are a number of movies addressing the issue of the female condition in different parts of the world. Not all of these movies are directed by women, as female directors unfortunately are still a minority," Barbera said.

Barbera asserted that the way male directors now portray women reveals "a new form of sensitivity of the female universe, something that rarely happened in the past."

The festival runs Aug. 28 to Sept. 7.

Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel will preside over the jury that will award the festival's Golden Lion, its top prize, as well as other honours.Piers Handling, who stepped down as CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, is among the other jury members.

The family drama The Truth, from award-winning Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, will open the festival, while the art world thrillerThe Burnt Orange Heresy is the closer.