Venice Film Festival opens with star power, and Gaza protesters

VENICE

The Venice Film Festival kicked off Wednesday with Hollywood royalty arriving for Italy's glitzy movie showcase where a strong line up of star-packed films will vie with protests about the Gaza war for public attention.

Julia Roberts and George Clooney are some of the biggest names at the 82nd edition of the world's longest-running festival, with top directors from Kathryn Bigelow to Jim Jarmusch all due on the sandy Lido across the Venice lagoon.

The main event in the opening ceremony was Francis Ford Coppola awarding a Lifetime Achievement award to German director Werner Herzog ("Grizzly Man," "Fitzcarraldo") for his canon of more than 70 films.

Roberts will appear at Venice for the first time today in the out-of-competition cancel-culture drama "After the Hunt", from Italy's Luca Guadagnino.

Winners of the festival's prestigious Golden Bear top prize often go on to Oscar glory, such as "Nomadland" or "Joker" in previous years.

Though the festival and this year's jury president Alexander Payne (‘Sideways’) were keen to focus on the roster of movies making their world premieres in the next 11 days, world events dominated their day-one press conference.

Protesters held up a "Free Palestine" banner in front of the festival's main building, while a group of Italian film professionals have called on organizers to openly condemn Israel's invasion and siege of Gaza.

A demonstration to condemn Israel and the war in Gaza has been called for Saturday in Venice by hundreds of local political and rights groups.

The festival had already declared "huge sadness and suffering vis-a-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine," its director Alberto Barbera told reporters. But he ruled out rescinding invitations to pro-Israeli actors.

Israel's nearly two-year bombardment of Gaza also featured prominently during the Cannes film festival in May where hundreds of movie figures signed a petition saying they were "ashamed" of their industry's "passivity" about the war.

The festival has selected a film about the war for its main competition, "The Voice of Hind Rajab" by Franco-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, which reconstructs the death of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed last year by Israeli forces.