"A lioness hovering high, handing us this 90th anniversary," is how Italian illustrator and author Lorenzo Mattotti described this year's poster -- his fifth one for La Biennale di Venezia Cinema. The upcoming Venice International Film Festival will officially be its 79th edition but it was in August of 1932 that the event first kicked off on The Lido.
"90 years have passed since the first edition of the festival and for this reason we wanted the image to have classic lines. Just as classic was the choice of the gold background," Mattotti explained further in an Italian press release published earlier today. "The color gold is also a reference to the posters of the early decades of the twentieth century. The festival has always been classic, but also provocative."
So why transform the iconic Leone d'Oro, the Golden Lion of the coveted prizes handed out, into a lioness? "Here the Lion, a symbol of power and strength, has turned into a Lioness, who has elegance and creativity within her. After 90 years, the Lion of Venice, symbol of the festival, has now become a Lioness that flies through history with energy and lightness -- a symbol of hope, far from aggression and ferocity," Mattotti confirmed.
Born in Brescia, Italy Lorenzo Mattotti lives and works in Paris. In the 1970's he began to draw comics and founded the graphic collaborative Valvoline with other illustrators. In cinema, he worked on the 2004 Eros, a collaboration between Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. In May 2019 he presented, with great success in Un Certain Regard in Cannes, his first animated feature film as author and director, titled The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily, inspired by the fable by Dino Buzzati.
In an article for Variety, published this past week, Italy-based writer Nick Vivarelli pointed to several fantastic films which should be featured in the line-up of the 79th edition. Among them, the new Luca Guadagnino, Bones and All starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as cannibal lovers on a road trip across America in the 1980s. And Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s second directorial effort which stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles. We also hear there may be as many as three Arab titles in the Giornate degli autori line up alone.
The announcement with the full line up by festival chief Alberto Barbera and La Biennale president Roberto Cicutto will be on Tuesday, the 26th of July, at 11 a.m. CET. The Giornale announcement will follow on the 28th of July.
For more information, check out La Biennale website.
