San Francisco Frontiers - Scrap nukes, director Bigelow urges in new thriller at Venice

The first woman to win the Academy Award for best director, Bigelow showcased her first movie in eight years, White House political thriller "A House of Dynamite", at the Venice Film Festival Tuesday to ecstatic early reviews. The Hollywood Reporter called it an "unrelenting chokehold thriller".

Arguing for nuclear disarmament, the director of "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty" said human survival was at stake.

"Hope against hope maybe we reduce the global stockpile someday but in the meantime we are really living in a house of dynamite," she told journalists at a press conference ahead of the film's premiere.

"I want them all gone. How is annihilating the world a good defensive measure? I mean, what are you defending?" asked Bigelow.

"We need to be much more informed, and that would be my greatest hope, and that we actually initiate a conversation about nuclear weapons and non-proliferation in a perfect world," she said.

The 2010 winner of the best director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker", which follows a US bomb disposal team in Iraq, Bigelow once again focuses on geopolitics and national security, this time a nuclear missile threat to the United States.

Starring Idris Elba as the US president, the action of the film takes place over 18 minutes following the discovery that a nuclear missile from an unknown country has been launched at the United States, threatening to wipe out Chicago.

Bigelow follows the countdown to the imminent strike from various command centres, starting with the Situation Room, the West Wing's crisis management centre.

In a tension-creating cinematic construct, she then revisits the same event, using the same dialogue, from the perspective of the Pentagon and the White House, in which the president is finally forced to decide how to act.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film was "so controlled, kinetic and unsettlingly immersive that you stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact."

It is one of 21 films competing for the top Golden Lion prize in Venice, which will be handed out on Saturday.

- Passion required -

It has been eight years since Bigelow's last feature, "Detroit" about the 1967 riot in the US city, making the premiere of "A House of Dynamite" one of the highlights of the festival.

"I have to be passionate about a subject matter," Bigelow said, explaining her absence until now.

"I have to really believe in whatever the material is."

Producer Netflix is banking on "A House of Dynamite" as an Oscar contender.

It is one of three films from the streaming platform at Venice this year, along with Noah Baumbach's comedy "Jay Kelly", starring George Clooney as a Hollywood star with an identity crisis, and the big-budget "Frankenstein" by Guillermo del Toro, starring Oscar Isaac.

Also premiering on Tuesday was "Dead Man's Wire" from Gus Van Sant -- the director of "Good Will Hunting" and "Drugstore Cowboy" -- who similarly has been out of the spotlight in recent years.

The US director's first movie since 2018 centres on a real-life hostage drama at a loan agency, with Bill Skarsgard and Al Pacino.

"L'Etranger" (The Stranger), an adaptation of the Albert Camus novel from French director Francois Ozon, also debuted.

Starring Benjamin Voisin as the detached protagonist Meursault, the film is shot in black and white, which Ozon said helped to get at the novel's essence.

"As it's a philosophical book, it seemed to me that black and white was ideal for telling this story, getting rid of colours, the essential was a form of purity," Ozon told a press conference.

The French director acknowledged feeling "a little anxious" tackling the French classic published in 1942.

"Everyone around me was saying: 'It's my favourite book. I'm curious to see what you'll do with it.'"

A.Clark--SFF