Giovanni Veronesi’s Dio ride set to close Venice Film Festival
The Italian period drama, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, will screen out of competition as Venice wraps its September edition.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
Giovanni Veronesi’s Dio ride has been chosen as the closing film for this year’s Venice Film Festival, giving the Italian director the final slot at one of cinema’s flashiest fall launchpads.
The festival said the film will be shown out of competition. Veronesi, known for The King’s Musketeers, wrote and directed the feature.
Dio ride is set in the mid-1600s and is loosely inspired by real events, according to the festival’s description. The story follows Frate Leopoldo, a friar whose humanity affects the people he meets.
The festival said the film deals with freedom, truth and the relationship between ordinary people and power, including the darker contradictions inside that dynamic.
A major Italian cast
Pierfrancesco Favino leads the cast. The lineup also includes Silvio Orlando, Alma Noce, Francesco Gheghi, Maurizio Lombardi, Paolo Rossi and Carlo Cecchi.
The screenplay was written by Veronesi with Nicola Baldoni, Gianluca Bernardini and Nicola Deorsola, alongside Paolo Portone and Jean Jacques Llunga.
Fabrizio Donvito, Benedetto Habib, Marco Cohen and Daniel Campos Pavoncelli produced the film for Indiana Production. Massimiliano Orfei, Luisa Borella and Davide Novelli produced for PiperFilm.
Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera praised the selection, saying the festival would end strongly with Veronesi and his cast. Barbera said the film brings irony and lightness to a subject usually treated with gravity, and connected that tone to a strand of Italian cinema he said has been neglected for too long.
Boyle opens, Veronesi closes
The festival’s closing-night pick comes after Venice named Danny Boyle’s Ink as its opening film. The Rupert Murdoch biopic will screen September 2 in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido.
Ink stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy. Boyle directs from a screenplay by James Graham, adapted from Graham’s Tony-nominated play Dear England.
O’Connell plays Larry Lamb, editor of The Sun, while Pearce plays Rupert Murdoch. Foy appears as Jules Davies.
Venice is scheduled to run from September 2 through September 12.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.