Synopses taken from the catalogue of the 64th Venice International Film Festival
published by Electa
Woody Allen
Cassandra’s Dream
Two brothers are desperate to better their troubled lives. One is a chronic gambler in debt over his head, and the other is a young man in love with a beautiful actress he has recently met. Their lives gradually become entangled into a sinister situation with intense and unfortunate results.
Júlio Bressane
Cleópatra
Cleopatra, the greatest myth of antiquity and last Queen of Egypt. She is a vortex of the historical heritage, political vocation, strategic daring and unbridled ambition needed to wield full power over the joint Greek and Egyptian cultures. But she is also a woman who joins her battles with her very being.
Claude Chabrol
La Fille coupée en deux
A young woman who wants to succeed in life, and whose radiance seduces those around her, falls in love with a renowned but perverse writer and marries a young, mentally unstable multimillionaire.
Amos Gitai
Disengagement
Ana is reunited with her estranged Israeli stepbrother Uli when he travels to France for the death of their father. She decides to return to Israel to search for the daughter she gave up at birth some 20 years ago. Crossing frontiers by car, train and boat, Ana and Uli end up in the turmoil and emotion of the military-enforced disengagement of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005.
Im Kwon Taek
Chun-nyun-hack
Dong-ho and Song-hwa are separately adopted by a nomadic singer Yubong and grow up as brother and sister. Dong-ho falls in love with Song-hwa, but he suffers from the fact that she is his own sister and constantly fights Yubong’s obsession about nurturing a great singer. Eventually, Dong-ho leaves home. However, with unchanging affection for Songhwa, he keeps following traces of his love while achieving drumming skills that will match well with her singing.The love story of Song-hwa who devotes her life and love to her talents in Pansori (traditional Korean vocal music), and Dong-ho who has devoted his life to loving his sister.
Takeshi Kitano
Kantoku banzai!
The story of a ruthless lady con artist and her money-hungry daughter who set their sights on a wealthy man. On screen and off, a series of wacky, unpredictable events soon follow, especially when an unprecedented catastrophe is about to change history. So this time, it’s up to the director to not only complete his film, but also save mankind!
Manoel de Oliveira
Cristóvão Colombo – O enigma
Obliged to abandon his studies and join his father, who had emigrated earlier to the USA, Manuel Luciano eventually returns to Portugal to complete his degree in medicine at Coimbra University. On graduating he goes back to America to work in a hospital and at the same time pursue his great love – researching the Portuguese Maritime Discoveries. He returns again to Portugal, this time to marry. And still in thrall to the Discoveries, Manuel Luciano takes his bride, a willing accomplice, on honeymoon in the south of Portugal ending up on the Sagres headland from whence the first ships set sail. Once back in America, their enthusiasm takes them to several sites: the Statue of Liberty; the Christopher Columbus statue in New York; the Dighton Rock Museum in Berkeley, where Manuel proudly shows Sílvia models of the ships used by Vasco de Gama and Magellan on their epic voyages and the markings carved into the rock by Portuguese navigators in the 16th century, and to Newport where they marvel at the Tower which so resembles a particular structure at the Convent of Tomar that it is thought to have been built by the Portuguese. The film ends on the Island of Porto Santo at the house where Christopher Columbus lived with his wife, Dona Filipa Perestrelo, and where Manuel discloses his latest conclusions concerning that famous explorer. Porto Santo was the first landfall of João Gonçalves Zarco, the Portuguese navigator – and so the film ends where the Discoveries began.
