At their latest press conference in Rome, the organizers of the 71st Venice International Film Festival have announced this Thursday that the event will have movies starring Al Pacino, Andrew Garfield, Ethan Hawke, and more vying for the Golden Lion. 

The festival will commence on August 27 and will continue on until September 6 in Venice Lido, a 7-mile sandbar in Venice. Directed by Alberto Barbera, the event will show movies from directors such as Abel Ferrara, Joe Dante, and Peter Bogdanovich.

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David Gordon Green's "Manglehorn" starring Pacino will also be shown while Ramin Bahrani's "99 Homes" features Garfield, Laura Dern, and Michael Shannon. 
Hawke appears in Andrew Niccol's "Good Kill" and in "Cymbeline" by Michael Almereyda. 

Other movies competing in the festival include the new drama "The Cut" from Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, and the English-language biopic "Pasolini" by Abel Ferrara featuring Willem Dafoe as the iconic Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

At the press conference, the festival's organizers stated the main goal of the event, which is to increase awareness and support the diverse aspects and forms of international cinema, "as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue". 

Movies categorized as non-competitive include American filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich's "She's Funny That Way"; Barry Levinson's "The Humbling" starring Al Pacino; Lisa Cholodenko's "Olive Kitteridge" based on Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning book; Joe Dante's horror-comedy "Burying the Ex"; Lars von Trier's "Nymphomaniac Volume II (long version) Director's Cut"; and 105-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira's short film "The Old Man of Belem."

It was also announced that the 71st Venice Film Festival will open with "Birdman" by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and conclude with The Golden Era, Ann Hui's take on Japanese imperialism in China. 

The festival organizers stated that this huge event also puts forward retrospectives and tributes to relevant figures to further understand the history of cinema.

TagsVenice Film Festival, Al Pacino, Andrew Garfield, Ethan Hawke