Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth's The Fifth Season and Tom Heene's feature debut Welcome Home are invited in Official Competition and the Venice International Critics' Week respectively. But there's even more to discover: this year's Venice line-up also includes three co-productions with Flanders: the Venice Days opener Pinocchio, Venice Days selected Kinshasa Kids and Tango libre in Orizzonti.
The Fifth Season is a haunting tale. A mysterious calamity strikes: spring refuses to come. The cycle of nature is capsized. Alice, Thomas and Octave, three kids in a village deep in the Ardennes forest, struggle to make sense of the world that is collapsing around them.
This new feature by filmmakers’ duo Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth is is the last part of a trilogy. After Khadak, which won the Lion of the Future/Luigi de Laurentiis Award in Venice in 2006 (where it was shown as part of the Venice Days), and the award-winning Altiplano that received its world première at the Cannes Critics' Week, this film again focuses on the troubled relationship between man and nature. The film is also selected for this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
Heene's feature debut, Welcome Home, shows three intense moments in the life of Lila, who is the common thread between three men she will meet during significant instants of her existence. Returning home after a long journey, Lila encounters an Iranian visiting Brussels for the first time in 40 years. The next moment she violently breaks up with her boyfriend. During a final encounter she has a brutal crash with a bunch of young Eurocrats.
Describing himself as an ‘audiovisual creator’, Tom Heene was production manager on films such as Pulsar and The Five Obstructions, while also creating audiovisual sound and image installations such as DarkMatr. Flemish producer is Tomas Leyers for Minds Meet. Welcome Home also features in this year's First Films Competition at the Montreal World Film Fest.
Opening this year's Venice Days is Enzo d'Alò's Pinocchio, a new animated feature that is said to remain as faithful to Carlo Collodi’s original text as possible, with illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti and music by Lucio Dalla. The Italian-French-Belgian-Luxembourg venture is co-produced in Flanders by Walking The Dog (A Monster in Paris) and is represented internationally by Rezo Films.
Frédéric Fonteyne is a Venice regular. After Gille's Wife and A Pornographic Affair, he's back on the Lido with the Orizzonti-selected Tango libre. The film tells the story of a love quadrangle. François Damiens plays a prison guard who is seduced by the woman who shares life and love with two prisoners who he has under his guard. Set against a background of tango, the movement of bodies and feelings traverses throughout, and questions all the certainties in the life of JC. Starring alongside Damiens are Anne Paulicevich, Sergi López and Jan Hamenecker. Flemish co-producer is Minds Meet, while Films Distribution is handling international sales.
Finally, Marc-Henri Wajnberg's Kinshasa Kids will also feature in the Venice Days line-up. In Kinshasa, Congo, around 30,000 children are accused of witchcraft and are kicked out of their homes. Living on the street, José and his friends - all treated like witch children - decide to form a music band to ward off bad luck with a crazy impresario called Bebson. Together they will rock Kinshasa!"