From the opening film,Everest, to Charlie Kaufman’s crowd-funded animation Anomalisa and Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, and there is a promising list of premieres this yearThe Venice film festival is squeezed between the auteurist prestige of Cannes in May and that colossal awards curtain-raiser provided by Toronto in September. But it can still regularly serve up stars and directorial heavy-hitters – and so it has proved this year.
In fact,the Venice opener has achieved a certain institutional prestige itself – Birdman final year, Gravity the year before. For 2015 it is Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robin Wright,the true story of climbers trapped on the peak by a snowstorm. It could yet turn out to be a flee-of-the-mill action film, but Venice chief Alberto Barbera has form in finding a genuinely exciting picture to kick off his festival.
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Source: theguardian.com