Sawt Falasteen - Venice Film Festival opens with star power, and Gaza protesters

Julia Roberts and George Clooney are some of the biggest names at the 82nd edition of the world's longest-running festival, with top directors from Kathryn Bigelow to Jim Jarmusch all due on the sandy Lido across the Venice lagoon.

The main event in Wednesday evening's opening ceremony was Francis Ford Coppola awarding a Lifetime Achievement award to German director Werner Herzog ("Grizzly Man", "Fitzcarraldo") for his canon of more than 70 films.

Herzog, who said he always searched for the "sublime" in his films, will showcase his latest documentary, "Ghost Elephants", about a lost herd in Angola, on Thursday.

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's "La Grazia" -- about an Italian president grappling with doubts over whether to sign a euthanasia bill into law -- was the first main in-competition movie presented on Wednesday.

"Dwelling on doubt and then allowing that doubt to mature into a decision is something that is increasingly rare," Sorrentino told journalists.

"Mother", a film depicting Mother Teresa as a sometimes ruthless figure struggling to reconcile her views on motherhood and abortion, opened the secondary Orizzonti section.

Eyes were set to quickly turn to Hollywood's favourite leading man, Clooney, who stepped off a water taxi in Venice with his wife Amal on Tuesday.

On Thursday, he will be seen in the premiere of Netflix-produced comedy "Jay Kelly", directed by Noah Baumbach, in which he plays a top Hollywood actor with an identity crisis.

On the same night is the premiere of sci-fi comedy "Bugonia" from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, which stars Emma Stone as a pharmaceutical executive kidnapped by people who mistake her for an alien.

Roberts, meanwhile, will appear at Venice for the first time on Friday in the out-of-competition cancel-culture drama "After the Hunt", from Italy's Luca Guadagnino.

Winners of the festival's prestigious Golden Bear top prize often go on to Oscar glory, such as "Nomadland" or "Joker" in previous years.

- Pro-Palestinian protest -

Though the festival and this year's jury president Alexander Payne ("Sideways") were keen to focus on the roster of movies making their world premieres in the next 11 days, world events dominated their day-one press conference.

Protesters held up a "Free Palestine" banner in front of the festival's main building, while a group of Italian film professionals have called on organisers to openly condemn Israel's invasion and siege of Gaza.

A demonstration to condemn Israel and the war in Gaza has been called for Saturday in Venice by hundreds of local political and rights groups.

The festival had already declared "huge sadness and suffering vis-a-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine", its director Alberto Barbera told reporters. But he ruled out rescinding invitations to pro-Israeli actors.

Israel's nearly two-year bombardment of Gaza also featured prominently during the Cannes film festival in May where hundreds of movie figures signed a petition saying they were "ashamed" of their industry's "passivity" about the war.

The festival has selected a film about the war for its main competition -- "The Voice of Hind Rajab" by Franco-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, which reconstructs the death of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed last year by Israeli forces.

- 'Frankestein' -

The flurry of premieres to be screened in Venice also include Guillermo del Toro big-budget remake of "Frankenstein", starring Oscar Isaac, or Bigelow's political thriller "A House of Dynamite", starring Idris Elba.

In one of the boldest casting choices, British actor Jude Law will try his hand at Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas's "The Wizard of the Kremlin", while Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson portrays mixed martial arts champion Mark Kerr in much-hyped "The Smashing Machine" from Benny Safdie.

Z.AlNajjar--SF-PST