Two fallen heroes of British cinema have found a sanctuary at this year's Venice film festival after organisers handed competition slots to the talented, wayward directors Terry Gilliam and Jonathan Glazer. Gilliam returns to the fray with his first film since 2009's ill-starred The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which had to be patched together following the death of its lead actor Heath Ledger. In the case of Sexy Beast director Glazer the wait has been even longer. It is nearly a decade since his previous picture, Birth, crashed at the box office back in 2004.
Gilliam's new film, The Zero Theorem, stars Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz as a reclusive maths genius and showcases supporting performances from Ben Whishaw and Tilda Swinton. Glazer's Under the Skin, adapted from the 2000 novel by Michel Faber, features Scarlett Johansson as a flesh-eating alien, hunting hitch-hikers in the wilds of northern Scotland.
Other films selected for competition include James Franco's adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel Child of God, Kelly Reichardt's eco-terrorist drama Night Moves, and David Gordon Green's Joe, in which Nicolas Cage headlines as a Mississippi tree poisoner. Veteran Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki returns with the aviation drama Kaze Tachinu, while Errol Morris looks set to stoke controversy with The Unknown Known, a documentary about the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. British director Stephen Frears will also be in Venice competition with his new film Philomena. Frears's fact-based adoption drama stars Judi Dench as a mother in search of the son she gave up.
The festival opens with Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, an existential sci-fi thriller that features George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as imperilled astronauts aboard a stricken space shuttle. Elsewhere, there are out-of-competition slots for Kim Ki Duk's provocative, blood-soaked Moebius, which has already scandalised the ratings board in the director's native South Korea, and Paul Schrader's trouble-plagued The Canyons, an erotic drama scripted by Bret Easton Ellis that pairs Lindsay Lohan with porn star James Deen.
It remains to be seen whether festival controversy will be confined to the screenings. Outraged by the government's decision to cut a tax credit that can offset up to 5m-euros of an Italian film's budget, industry groups are planning a series of demonstrations on the Venice Lido. The Hollywood Reporter suggests that any festival screening attended by government ministers are likely to be met with a mass choreographed walk-out. Gillam and Glazer, it would seem, are not out of the woods quite yet.
The 70th Venice film festival runs 28 August-7 September.
