George Clooney kicks off the Venice Film Festival Wednesday with the world premiere of the Coen brothers' latest work but from then on Hollywood gives way to indie movies, Japanese anime and more Italian films than usual.
Clooney and his pal Brad Pitt will hit the red carpet to promote Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, a crime comedy also starring John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton.
The movie, about two gym employees' bungled attempts to sell a CIA disc, isn't among the 21 films in competition but audience and critical reaction may show whether the brothers can repeat last year's Oscar success with No Country For Old Men which won the best picture and director awards.
The only US films by name directors are Jonathan (Silence of the Lambs) Demme's family dysfunction comedy Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway and three-time Oscar nominee Debra Winger, and Kathryn (Point Break) Bigelow's Hurt Locker, an Iraq drama starring Colin Farrell, Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes and Willem Dafoe.
The other American films in competition are by lesser-known or first-time directors.
Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke in the title role while Vegas, Based On A True Story is top Iranian director Amir Naderi's bid for wider fame.
Acclaimed Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) makes his debut behind the camera with The Burning Plain, a multi-layered family drama featuring Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron. Japan and Italy occupy most of the remaining positions on the starting grid with three and four films respectively.
Two of the Japanese films are anime including cult director Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo On Cliff By The Sea.
Miyazaki, who made the Oscar-nominated Spirited Away, has scored a huge hit in his home country with Ponyo. Another anime king, Mamoru Oshii, presents The Sky Crawlers while cult director Takeshi Kitano, a Golden Lion winner in 1997, has Achilles And The Tortoise in competition this time.
With the heavy Japanese presence, it could be the fourth straight year that the Golden Lion goes to Asia which won last year with Lust, Caution by Taiwan's Ang Lee. Four Italian films will compete for the Lion: Pupi Avati's Il papa' di Giovanna (Giovanna's Dad); Pappi Corsicato's Il seme della discordia (The Seed of Discord); Chilean-Italian Marco Bechis's Birdwatchers; and Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek's Un giorno perfetto (A Perfect Day).
Ozpetek, known as an explorer of gay themes, and Bechis, director of the acclaimed 1999 Argentine torture drama Garage Olimpo, are reckoned to have a better shot than the other two.
Bechis's film, whose Italian title translates as The Land of the Red Men, is about the extinction of an Indios tribe because of farmers' land grabs; Ozpetek's film is an adaptation of a family drama by novelist Melania Mazzucco.
Veteran Avati's domestic drama in Fascist Italy is his 46th film since 1970 while Corsicato's sentimental comedy about, among other things, male sterility, is loosely based on the Heinrich von Vleist story that inspired Swiss master Eric Rohmer's 1976 Cannes winner Die Marquise von O. German magazine Der Spiegel this week criticised festival director Marco Mueller for overloading the competition with home-grown art films which it said have traditionally fared badly with punters.
Mueller rejected the charge that he was favouring art-house fare and said Hollywood's lesser presence was partly due to this year's writers' strike.
Two of world cinema's grand old men, Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira and Italy's Mario Monicelli will again be celebrated in Venice.
De Oliveira, 100, already won career Golden Lions in 1985 and 2004 while Monicelli, 93, a 'commedia all'italiana' master, won one in 1991.
In another of this year's highlights, Emmanuelle Beart stars in Fabrice Du Welz's out-of-competition horror flick Vuinyan. This week's other much-anticipated event, also out of competition, is a biopic on legendary Italian designer Valentino.
Valentino: The Last Emperor, by Vanity Fair reporter Matt Tyrnauer, shows Thursday amid a huge celebrity bash.
The 75-year-old fashion icon, who retired in January after 50 years dressing the world's most glamorous women, calls the documentary his ''authorised biography''.
Mueller, the fest chief, called it ''the most fictionalised non-fiction film I have seen lately''.
This year's festival jury is headed by German director Wim Wenders, best known for his 1999 Oscar-nominated Cuban music documentary Buena Vista Social Club.
The German director won the Golden Lion in 1982 for The State of Things and was nominated in 2004 for Land of Plenty.
The other jurors are: Russian screenwriter Juriy Arabov; Italian actress Valeria Golino; British visual artist Douglas Gordon; US filmmaker John Landis; Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel; and Hong Kong director Johnnie To. The 65th Venice International Film Festival, organised by the Venice Biennale, runs from August 27 to September 6.
Tuesday night's 'pre-opening' is dedicated to veteran Italian director Ermanno Olmi, best known for his 1978 Cannes winner The Tree of Wooden Clogs.
