The Venice Film Festival, held each year in Italy, is coming up in late August, and the excitement around the event is growing as more and more announcements regarding the film submissions are released. Deadline recently released a list of the film festival’s lineup, which includes works by three rising Asian filmmakers. Read up on their submissions below!
Eye on Juliet
Kim Nguyen’s “Eye On Juliet”
Directed by Kim Nguyen, a Vietnamese Canadian filmmaker, “Eye on Juliet” is a unique love story between Gordon, a drone operator living in America, and Ayusha, a Middle Eastern girl living continents away who has been promised to much older man. Gordon and Ayusha overcome the distance and their unorthodox means of communication to fall in love while Gordon tries to help her escape her fate. Nguyen also directed “War Witch” in 2012, a harrowing drama about a child soldier in Sub-Saharan Africa thought to be a witch. “Eye on Juliet” stars Joe Cole (“Peaky Blinders”) and is produced by Item 7.
Samui Song
Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s “Samui Song”>
Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang has submitted a film called “Samui Song.” Starring Cherman Boonyasak and Vithaya Pansringarm (who was last seen beating Ryan Gosling to a pulp in “Only God Forgives”), “Samui Song” is about a Thai soap actress who worries about her foreigner husband, who is starting to become too attached to a cult leader known as “The Holy One.”
The Taste of Rice Flower
Pengfei’s “The Taste of Rice Flower”
From emerging Chinese director Pengfei, we get “The Taste of Rice Flower,” an indie drama about a woman named Ye Nan who returns to her hometown in Yunnan to take care of her fussy 11-year-old son after years spent away. The film tackles issues of poverty and religion as well as the disappearing minority cultures in the face of an increasing modernization in China.
