The members of the Jury have been named for the renewed Orizzonti section at the 67th Venice International Film Festival (September 1-11, 2010), chaired – as was announced earlier – by the Iranian artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, who won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009 with her first feature film, Women without Men (Zanan bedoone mardan), as well as the Golden Lion at the 48th Art Biennale in 1999.
Shirin Neshat will be joined on the Orizzonti Jury by: Tunisian director and scriptwriter Raja Amari, in the Orizzonti section at 2009 Venice with Buried Secrets (Dohawa) and previously an award-winner at international film festivals with her debut film Satin Rouge; Filipino director Lav Diaz, one of the most important directors of South-East Asia, a double prize-winner in the Orizzonti section with Death in the Land of Encantos (Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto, 2007 Special mention) and with Melancholia (2008 Orizzonti Award); Austrian film critic Alexander Horwath, director of the Austrian Film Museum since 2002, director of the Viennale from 1992 to 1997, and a contributor to the most prestigious international magazines; and Italian director Pietro Marcello, discovery of the Venice Film Festival in 2007 with his maiden documentary Il passaggio della linea presented in the Orizzonti section, and who this year has won numerous prizes for The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo).
The 67th Venice International Film Festival (September 1 – 11, 2010) is directed by Marco Mueller and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta. The Orizzonti section starting from this year opens to all “extra-format” works, with a broader and more dynamic overview of the latest forms adopted by the expressive languages used in cinema. The international Orizzonti Jury will attribute four new awards: the Orizzonti Award (full-length films), the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize (full-length films), the Orizzonti Award (Short films), and the Orizzonti Award (Medium-length films). No ex aequo awards are permitted.
The new Orizzonti section absorbs not only the CortoCortissimo section, but also all the Special Events, without distinctions of genre and duration, becoming a “laboratory” of the various modes of expression in the visual arts within the larger “workshop” that La Biennale di Venezia actually embodies, in increasingly close touch with the other sectors.