Maverick directors Abel Ferrara, Roy Andersson and Fatih Akin lead the charge at this year's Venice film festival, as a volatile lineup spotlights tales of crime and punishment, war, recession, and the existential crisis of a pigeon. Venice may lack the glamour of Cannes, or the gloss of the Toronto event that follows hard on its heels. But its wild menagerie should be enough to ensure a colourful, controversial edition of the world's oldest film festival.
Fresh from shocking the Cannes critics with Welcome to New York, Ferrara comes to the Lido with Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe as the doomed Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Akin's The Cut casts Tahar Rahim as a mute father in search of his daughters, while Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting the Nature of Existence promises a fresh flight of fancy from the iconoclastic Swedish director.
Five American films have been selected for competition, including Ramin Bahrani's recession drama 99 Homes and Andrew Niccol's Good Kill, which stars Ethan Hawke as a drone operator in Afghanistan. Al Pacino plays an ex-con turned locksmith in David Gordon Green's Manglehorn. It will be Green's second visit to the Lido in as many years, having brought his Nicolas Cage drama Joe to the 2013 competition.
Other potential highlights include The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to his acclaimed 2012 documentary The Act of Killing, and Francesco Munzi's mafia saga Anime Nere. David Oelhoffen Loin des Hommes, meanwhile, focuses on the Franco-Algerian war and stars Viggo Mortensen as a teacher who befriends a dissident.
Away from the main competition, James Franco continues his journey through the landmarks of American literature, adapting William Faulkner's classic 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury for the screen. Elsewhere, the organisers will screen the unabridged director's cut of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac. New films from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Ulrich Seidl, Joe Dante and Barry Levinson are also screening out of competition.
British hopes are relegated to the neighbouring Horizons sidebar and spearheaded by Duane Hopkins's social-realist thriller Bypass. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's The President and Naji Abu Nowar's Theeb are both listed as UK co-productions.
The 71st Venice film festival opens on August 27 with the premiere of Alejandro Inarritu's Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. It closes September 6 with Ann Hui's The Golden Era, a tale of Japanese imperialism in China.
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