Mike Collett-White

Reuters

LONDON: What the Venice film festival lacks in star power this year it hopes to make up for with an unusually young list of directors and the appearance of some of Hollywood’s more enigmatic figures.

With the irrepressible Quentin Tarantino heading the jury that hands out the coveted Golden Lion at the end of the September 1-11 event, it is fitting that mavericks and misfits more than movie royalty look set to steal the headlines.

“In a way Venice can still hold itself up and say, ‘We’ve got the edgier American people coming,’ as you have Vincent Gallo and Monte Hellman, for example,” said Jay Weissberg, film critic for Variety magazine, who is based in Italy. “It makes it look as if they are holding up the art side of cinema.”

It is a calculated gamble at a time when Venice, the world’s oldest film festival and one of the most prestigious, is struggling to fight off competition from Toronto, which overlaps with Venice and features many of the same movies.

Its location in North America, relatively low costs and the presence of so many industry executives looking to deal, all make Toronto a tempting alternative for studios keen to showcase their films as the unofficial cinema awards race gets under way.

 Stars expected in Venice this year include Natalie Portman, Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck, Catherine Deneuve and Tarantino, but, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “that’s still a far cry from the star-studded cast of previous years.”

Youth, at least, is on Venice’s side, with the average age of filmmakers in the main competition an unusually low 47.

They include 41-year-old Darren Aronofsky, winner of the Golden Lion in 2008 with “The Wrestler,” whose “Black Swan,” a ballet-themed psychological drama starring Portman, will raise the curtain on the festival Wednesday evening.

Also in competition is Oscar winner Sofia Coppola, 39, who won a best screenplay Oscar for 2003’s “Lost in Translation.” This year she’s offering a dramatic comedy “Somewhere,” set in Hollywood and produced by her serial Oscar-winning father Francis Ford Coppola.

The comedy “Potiche,” by 43-year-old Frenchman Francois Ozon, has tapped mature talent in veterans Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu.

At the other end of the age range are 78-year-old Hellman, competing with low-budget crime drama “Road to Nowhere,” and Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, 72, on the Lido beachfront with the thriller “Essential Killing.”

In the latter film, actor and painter Gallo stars as an Afghan Taliban fighter who is captured but escapes on his way to a secret detention center in Europe.

The topical subject, and Gallo’s reputation as an uncompromising, eccentric artist, make it one of the more eagerly anticipated movies in the competition.

Robert Rodriguez’s out-of-competition “Machete” has also been highlighted. The action picture set partly along the US-Mexico border features Jessica Alba, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan and Robert De Niro.

“With Mexico, and immigration and the drug wars a daily front page story in the US, ‘Machete’ is likely to draw ample buzz,” said Sheri Jennings of Screen International.

Actor and director Casey Affleck presents his documentary “I’m Still Here,” about his brother-in-law actor Joaquin Phoenix’s surprise decision to retire in 2008 and reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician.

A bizarre chat show appearance last year as a mumbling, shaggy-haired guest had industry types wondering if Phoenix’s new act was a hoax, and already critics are debating whether “I’m Still Here” is more “mockumentary” than documentary.

And Julian Schnabel directs “Slumdog Millionaire” star Freida Pinto in “Miral,” about an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.

Organizers fear that Iranian authorities were unlikely to allow prominent filmmaker Jafar Panahi to travel to Venice for the Wednesday screening of his short film “The Accordion.”

Expressing their “solidarity” with Panahi, who won the Golden Lion here in 2000 for “The Circle,” they said in a statement: “We hope that in the coming days we will receive comforting news.”

Panahi is likely to be represented at the screening by his colleague Mazdak Taebi, the statement said.

Italy has four films in competition at the event, including Saverio Costanzo’s adaptation of the best-selling Paolo Giordano novel “The Solitude of Prime Numbers.”

Among the three French candidates is “Black Venus” by Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche, whose “The Secret of the Grain” won the special jury prize in Venice in 2007. “Black Venus” relates the story of a southern African slave of Dutch farmers who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in Europe in the early 19th century, forced to gyrate her large buttocks.

Only three Asian films are in competition at the world’s oldest film festival. Two are from Japan: “13 Assassins” by Miike Takashi and “Norwegian Wood” by Tran Anh Hung; and one from China, “Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame” by Tsui Hark. The event will screen 79 full-length premiers from 34 countries including a work from the Dominican Republic for the first time, about its neighbor Haiti.