Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t have a movie premiering in Venice this 12 months, however the 86-year-old Oscar winner is duly current for the 82nd version. His pal Mike Figgis’ behind-the-scenes portrait “Megadoc,” concerning the manufacturing of Coppola’s 2024 cinematic trigger célèbre “Megalopolis,” debuts out of competitors this week. And on the competition’s opening ceremony Wednesday evening, Coppola took to the dais to champion his longtime buddy, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, recipient of the competition’s honorary Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. (“Vertigo” icon Kim Novak will even obtain one later this week.)
Herzog’s new movie “Ghost Elephants,” about an elusive herd of the Angolan creatures, debuts in Venice this week as a part of the competition’s sturdy documentary slate, which additionally contains new movies from Laura Poitras and Sofia Coppola.
“One should have a good time that somebody like him can exist,” stated Coppola of Herzog, the 82-year-old documentary and fiction auteur whose movies have spanned in all places from the Caves of Lascaux in “Cave of Forgotten Goals” to pushing a steamboat up the Andes with Klaus Kinski in “Fitzcarraldo,” or alongside conservationist Timothy Treadwell in his final days for “Grizzly Man.”
“His work burst into my life with ‘The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser’ [from 1974], ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God,’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo.’ I’ve by no means seen such movies as these, all distinctive and really totally different from each other, and all magnificent,” stated Coppola, who put up a penniless Herzog at his San Francisco home to complete the script for “Fitzcarraldo.”
“He’s written operas, he’s directed roles, he’s acted. He not solely can fill the pages of an encyclopedia — Werner is one so, so crammed with exuberant creativity. … All of us joined collectively at my house in San Francisco, the place there was all the time enjoyable conversations and far studying and enthusiastic discoveries. I used to be engaged on a play at the moment, and keep in mind introducing one of many forged members, Lena, who ultimately turned his spouse. So when it comes right down to is that this: If Werner has limits, I don’t know what they’re. Werner’s life and his very existence ship a problem to everybody on the market: copy, when you can. And all of us actually surprise if anybody ever will. Werner, I’ll eat my hat if anybody comes [along] who can do it.”
A tearful Herzog took to the stage on the Sala Grande on the Lido di Venezia. “Francis has been extraordinarily sort and beneficiant to me,” Herzog stated. “We all know one another for half a century by now. He’s been beneficiant, inviting me at a time after I didn’t have cash to pay for a lodge room. I stayed at his home in San Francisco and wrote my screenplay of ‘Fitzcarraldo.’ Each of us got here very shut to creating a really huge movie concerning the conquest of Mexico collectively, seen from the angle of the Aztecs, a movie mission that didn’t materialize, however it’s a beautiful time once we plotted about it. And, after all, with out Francis, I’d not have met my great spouse, Lena. Actually, it’s not true that we’re 30 years collectively. Now it’s to be appropriate: 29 years, 11 months, and 9 days.”
Herzog — whose “Unhealthy Lieutenant: Port of Name New Orleans” and “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Executed?” each performed Venice in competitors in 2009 — concluded, “I’ve all the time tried to attempt for one thing that goes deeper past what you usually see in film theaters. Go right into a deep type of poetry that’s attainable in cinema, looking for fact in uncommon methods. Reality is all the time one way or the other in cinema. It’s mysterious and elusive, and I all the time attempt to do one thing which was chic or one thing transcendental. This will likely sound just a little bit lofty. So in actual fact, I do consider that every one this has comparable causes. I all the time needed to be a great soldier of cinema.”
Later within the opening ceremony, competitors jury president Alexander Payne took to the stage hours after navigating questions on Gaza throughout the jury press convention. Protests surrounding the continued genocide in Gaza are roundly anticipated to dominate occasion area and information chatter all through the fest.
The jury additionally contains filmmakers Stéphane Brizé, Maura Delpero, Cristian Mungiu, and Mohammad Rasoulof, and actors Zhao Tao and 2025 Greatest Actress Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres, who collectively will have a look at 21 movies from the likes of Paolo Sorrentino (whose “La Grazia” opened the competition), Yorgos Lanthimos, Noah Baumbach, Park Chan-wook, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Olivier Assayas, Mona Fastvold, Benny Safdie, Jim Jarmusch, and extra.
“My fellow jurors and I categorical our nice honor of being requested to serve on the jury of this 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition, and we provide our biggest respect and warmest congratulations to all of the excellent filmmakers whose work we’ve got the privilege of seeing with virgin eyes,” Payne stated following a tribute reel montaging moments from his profession, from “Sideways” to “The Descendants.” “I encourage my fellow jury members and myself to think about that we all know one thing about cinema, but additionally nothing in any respect, to have a look at every film concurrently with the eyes of an expert but additionally with the eyes of a kid who is probably seeing a movie for the very first time. We all know that every of the movies might be some type of miracle, because the existence of cinema itself is a miracle, and we strategy our work with the spirit of nice pleasure.”