Venice Film Festival highlights

Eleven days of cinema and stars in Venice start on Wednesday, August 27. International celebrities and filmmakers come together for the 71st time at the world's oldest film festival, which runs through September 6. At the end, one director will go home with a Golden Lion. (Venice's city emblem also features the noble animal.) Fifty-five productions are on the official program.

Festival President Paolo Baratta (left) and Artistic Director Alberto Barbera have compiled an attractive program this year. Twenty films are competing for the top prize. In addition, a wide variety of top international films are on the line-up. The section "Venice Classics" will present 21 restored historical masterpieces.

While German entries were conspicuously absent from the Cannes Film Festival in May, director Fatih Akin is representing Germany in Venice with "The Cut." The film deals with the Armenian genocide following World War I - a particularly controversial topic in Turkey. "The Cut" is a candidate for the Golden Lion.

Lighter fare is set to open the festival: "Birdman," by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The comedy is about a has-been film star - played by Michael Keaton (left) - who is fighting for a dignified end to his career. Since the top roles don't fall into his lap, he's forced to take second-class theater parts and tolerate narcissistic stage colleagues.

The jury under the direction of film composer Alexandre Desplat will decide whether Fatih Akin, Gonzalez Inarritu or another filmmaker will take home the Golden Lion. Desplat has written scores for blockbusters like "The Girl with the Peal Earring," "Harry Potter" and "Grand Budapest Hotel." German director Philip Gröning, who won a prize at last year's Venice Film Festival, is also in the jury.

Russian films have been few and far between at the major film festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Venice. But this year in Venice, Andrei Konchalovski, one of Russia's most important directors, will be showing "The Postman's White Nights." The film is about a handful of people who live off the beaten path in a remote Russian province.

The Hollywood film "Good Kill" vies for the Golden Lion with a particularly current topic: modern warfare in the digital age. Ethan Hawke (pictured) plays a US pilot who specializes in drone activity in the Middle East. Over time, the soldier's work gnaws at his conscience and he questions the ethics of the war tactics he is implementing. New Zealand-born Andrew Niccol produced the anti-war film.

The world's major film festivals offer more than just big prizes. They also provide a platform for lesser-known international productions and honor cinematic tradition with retrospective series. Many festivals, like Venice, also include a trade fair, where the global film industry can buy and sell the latest products.

In Venice, the world of cinema is not only the focus of the opening production, but also of a documentary by Abel Ferrara. In "Pasolini," the American director depicts the last 24 hours in the life of Italian filmmaker Paolo Pasolini, played by Willem Dafoe, before he was killed. Fans of German film history can also look forward to the documentary "From Caligari to Hitler."

Last year, the Italian documentary "Sacro GRA" won the Golden Lion. This year, another documentary - Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Look of Silence" - is included in the competition. Oppenheimer already has an Oscar in his collection, having won the coveted award this year for "The Act of Killing." His newest film covers genocide in Indonesia.

The winners of the Golden and Silver Lions will be disclosed on September 6. Jury decisions are often controversial - as was last year's documentary pick. The competing films are often too different to make an objection choice - but the juries are also made up of diverse personalities with different tastes.