The Venice International Film Festival will be held from August 28 – September 7, 2024.
By Hope Ibiale
The organisers of the 81st Venice International Film Festival have announced its lineup. Among the selection are two African films from Egyptian and Tunisian filmmakers, Khaled Mansour and Mehdi M. Barsaoui.
Their films, Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo and Aicha, will be screened in the Horizons Extra and Horizons section of the festival, respectively. Mansour’s film is the first Egyptian film selected to be on the festival’s lineup after Ibrahim El Batout’s Winter of Discontent in 2012. The film festival will be held from August 28 – September 7, 2024.

Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo follows the story of a man who goes on a journey to save his dog and his best friend. The film stars Essam Omar, Rakin Saad, Sama Ibrahim and Ahmed Bahaa. The film was also selected for the Red Sea Lodge development programme in 2021 and received a production grant from the Red Sea Fund this year.

Aicha, which was inspired by true events, tells the story of Aya, a young girl who lives with her parents and feels trapped. Following an unexpected twist, Aya elopes to another city, but a new development threatens to upend her fresh start.
Other films set to screen at the festival include Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie a Deux, Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, and many others.

The screening has been shared with different parts. They include the Venezia 81 Competition, Out of Competition (Fiction & Non-Fiction), Special Screenings, Series, Horizons Extra, Horizons, and Venice Classics (Documentaries About Cinema).
This year’s Venice International Film Festival international jury, chaired by French actor Isabelle Huppert, includes figures such as James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz, and Zhang Ziyi.