VENICE, Italy (AP) – The Venice Film Festival is bringing 11 days of red carpet premieres, innovative movies and Hollywood glamour to the Italian city. Here’s what has been catching the eye of The Associated Press:
IRANIAN DIRECTOR SEEKS SANCTIONS END
Times are tough for the characters in “Tales,” a Venice Film Festival entry from Iranian director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. Jobs are scarce, prices are high and drug addiction claims too many young people.
One of 20 films competing for the festival’s Golden Lion prize, “Tales” is a series of fictional vignettes set among struggling residents of Tehran – indebted cabbies, impoverished pensioners, unemployed factory workers.
The movie never makes the cause of their woes explicit, but the director says she wanted to show the harm that Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program were doing to ordinary people.