Tornatore's Baaria to open Venice Film Festival

Baaria, directed by Italy's Giuseppe Tornatore, who won an Oscar in 1990 for Cinema Paradiso, will open this year's Venice Film Festival.

It is the first time in 20 years that an Italian film has headlined the Venice event, one of Europe's top three film festivals.

The festival, to run Sept. 2-12, will announce a full lineup in July.

Baaria, which follows three generations in Tornatore's hometown of Bagheria in Sicily, will be competing for the Golden Lion, the top award. Baaria is Sicilian slang for Bagheria.

Tornatore, 53, had a $30-million US budget for the film, making it one of the most expensive Italian productions ever made.

Tornatore described Baaria as "my most personal film," adding it is "an amusing and wistful story, of great loves and irresistible utopian dreams."

"Baaria is… the name of a Sicilian town where the people's lives unfold along the main street. A few hundred metres, no more. But if you walk up and down it for years, you can learn what the whole world will never be able to teach you," he said in a statement.

His 1995 feature The Star Maker  won a special jury prize at Venice in 1995, and in 1993, he was a member of the international jury. The Star Maker received an Oscar nomination, and Cinema Paradiso, also set in a Sicilian town, won a best foreign film Academy Award.

Baaria stars Monica Bellucci, Michele Placido, Raoul Bove and Donatella Finocchiaro, with newcomers Francesco Scianna and Margareth Madè in the lead roles.

It also features a score by Italy's greatest film composer, Ennio Morricone.

Barria has its gala premiere Sept. 2 in Venice and its Italian commercial release on Sept. 25.