The festival’s other major eat-the-rich polemic is, in the grand scheme of Yorgos Lanthimos’s oeuvre, a minor work, to be sure, but still a riveting, twisty, and raucously funny one. It pits a pallid, greasy-haired Jesse Plemons, as an erratic conspiracy theorist, against a bald and conniving Emma Stone, as the ruthless big-pharma CEO he abducts, convinced that she’s an alien responsible for the reduction in the honeybee population that’s slowly killing the planet. The Greek auteur has worked with better scripts in the past, but in terms of its commanding performances, design, sharply precise cinematography, gleefully cruel humor, and bizarro ending, this madcap thriller can’t help but hit the spot for existing devotees.

Kabul, Between Prayers

Photo: Venice Film Festival

With a focus similar to Jonathan Glazer’s masterful The Zone of Interest, Aboozar Amini’s beautifully shot documentary is the eye-opening story of Samim, a Taliban soldier in Afghanistan’s capital, and his wide-eyed younger brother, Rafi, who dreams of becoming a fighter, too. It opens on Samim praying, his devotion to his cause apparent, and as we get to know him, we’re astonished to find a funny, goofy, sometimes charming and often dissatisfied young man just trying to do his best—to fix his marriage, set an example for his family, and follow orders. The same is true of Rafi, a 14-year-old who loves to play rough in bucolic surroundings and has a new crush, but also dreams of martyrdom. It’s a remarkably bold and effective choice—while most recent documentaries about the region, very understandably, depict such figures as the embodiment of evil, this confronts us with their humanity and, without ever spelling it out or washing away their sins, the radicalization that’s shaped them. It has an ending that’s been imprinted on my brain ever since, and feels inherently, profoundly cinematic in a way that many of the other, more high-profile documentaries at Venice (Below the Clouds, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, Landmarks) did not.

Marc by Sofia

Photo: A24