Notes from the 82nd Venice Festival: The vertical and horizontal axes of dictatorship

Over the weekend, thousands gathered on the island of Lido to demonstrate against Israel's war crimes that have forced the people of Gaza to starve and flee their land.

The crowd was larger than expected. The police cordon stationed at the entrance to the large festival area was unable to be breached, but the loud voices of the protesters echoed through.

Moreover, the number of well-known figures supporting the protest has increased, with the number of filmmakers who signed the call for action launched by the "Venice4Palestine" initiative a week ago reaching 2,000. Ken Loach, who signed on the first day, was joined by Guillermo del Toro, Todd Fields, and Michael Moore. Even Jim Jarmusch, whose new film "Father Mother Sister Brother," a sensitive chamber music with subtle, heartfelt poetry, was among the 21 Golden Lion nominees, criticized his film's producer, Mubi, for signing a deal with the American company Sequoia Capital, which collaborates with the Israeli army.

However, news from the front lines suggests that a ceasefire is not expected anytime soon in either Gaza or Ukraine. On the contrary, everyone is preparing for major wars. European Union countries have already begun investing billions of euros in armaments months ago. Nuclear-armed countries, meanwhile, are intensifying their competition. People everywhere have been led to believe that austerity policies are essential for the development of defense industries. The general economic situation is already bleak; for example, the slowdown in the tourism sector has been acutely felt even in Laguna.

In this situation, everyone knows very well that investments in culture and arts will decrease and subsidies will decrease.

So, what should be done? In addition to protesting and defending peace and democracy by taking a stand against all forms of local and global injustice, lies, and manipulation, it is also increasingly important to question and try to understand the dynamics that have brought global balances to this fragile point.

French director Olivier Assayas (1955) answers this question by adapting a serious book. He adapts "The Kremlin Wizard" (1973), a book by Giuliano da Empoli, a political scientist, journalist, and author who also served as an advisor to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, which had a wide impact in France three years earlier. Filming a book that draws on real events, rigorous research, and observations to develop new theories is undoubtedly challenging. However, despite the weight imposed by a number of factors, including the importance of the didactic dimension and the inevitable use of an inner voice, the compelling performances of British actor Jude Law, who delivers a particularly compelling portrayal of Putin, and Paul Dano, who delicately portrays his chief advisor, Vadim Baranov, further intensify the impact of this gripping film.

"The Kremlin Wizard" is a must-see film to grasp the vertical structures rising on the rigid nationalist and militarist foundations that lie behind all global powers, let alone Russia, and to ponder this issue, thus gaining a deeper understanding of the realities of the world. It's certainly not an easy watch.

However, it is not a suffocating, exhausting and mind-numbing work like Kathryn Bigelow’s latest highly anticipated film, “A House of Dynamite,” which is a Netflix production that follows the classic formulas of exciting, fast-paced television series; quite the contrary.

Rajab's sad story

We started with Gaza, let's end with Gaza.

This Wednesday, the reality of Gaza will resonate more concretely on festival screens. Tunisian-born French director Kaouther Ben Hania will hear "The Voice of Hind Rajab," which tells the painful story of Hind Rajab, the little girl killed in Gaza on January 29, 2024.

'THE FOREIGNER' ON THE SILVER SCREEN

This year, we're observing a greater presence than ever before in the Golden Lion race for adaptations of novels. The increasingly alarming realities of the world have perhaps led to a growing interest, even a need, for literary masterpieces. The most successful of these adaptations, "The Stranger" (1967), by François Ozon, whose performance we anticipate will be at the awards ceremony on Saturday night, perfectly conveys the essence of one of Nobel Prize-winning French author Albert Camus's most important works. It reveals, with an extraordinarily sensitive cinematic language, the mundane horizontal tensions that sustain the aforementioned vertical fascist structure (religious doctrines, moral codes, strict sanctions, social pressures, conservative habits, meaningless anxieties...). I wish everyone would read Albert Camus again, grasping his essence as deeply as François Ozon. Kafka and Camus so beautifully capture the complex absurdity of our times.