It’s absolutely fascinating getting to know the behind-the-scenes drama that happens at film festivals. This year, I was lucky enough to befriend a person deeply ingrained inside the Venezia selection committee and he’s been spilling the beans on the 2021 selection process ever since.
We already know that Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” was deemed unworthy for competition by Venice boss Albert Barbera and his cohorts, but what people don’t seem to know is that Venice refused a bunch of Oscar contenders in 2021 that ended up at Telluride.
The titles rejected by Venice this year included the likes of Joe Wright’s “Cyrano,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Will Sharpe’s “The Electric Life of Louis Wain” and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “King Richard.” It just goes to show the severe divide in European and American tastes.
On the foreign side, Venice continued its neglect of Terrence Davies films as the festival refused a competition slot for the British director’s latest feature, “Benediction.” Davies has struggled to be included at both Cannes and Venice these last twenty years, despite his excellent reputation with U.S. and U.K. critics.
Meanwhile, Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo” was passed on by both Cannes and Venice. The film had a bad reputation with festival programmers earlier in the year and TIFF finally picked it up for its world premiere in September. It was met, unsurprisingly, with terrible reviews. If you remember, Cantet had won the Palme d’Or in 2008 with “The Class.”
Finally, Bruno Dumont’s “France” was originally supposed to have its world premiere at Venice, but in a last-minute shocker, that irked Barbera to no end, Cannes managed to convince Dumont to pull the film out of Venice and premiere it at their festival in June.
Adeyemi’s relationship with lead Amandla Stenberg reportedly fell apart after the actress publicly discussed the author’s support of her casting.