Venezia Film Festival: Tsukamoto's War Drama and Kahn's Youth Ward Film Premiere

At the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, two competition films were presented on Friday: '15/18 (A Place To Heal)' by Cédric Kahn and 'Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?' by Shinya Tsukamoto, starring Geoffrey Rush. The former is set in the neuropsychiatry ward for adolescents of a French hospital. For the screenplay, the director and screenwriter Kahina Le Querrec visited a real ward, observing individual and family interviews and the daily life of the young patients. The latter, originally titled 'Nelson san, anata wa hito wo koroshimashitaka?' in Japanese, follows Allen Nelson, played by Broadway actor Rodney Hicks, who enlists in the Marines at 18 to escape racial discrimination and poverty. After service, he suffers from PTSD and gradually loses ties with family, work, and home, becoming homeless. He is helped by a psychiatrist at a veterans' hospital. The film is based on Allen Nelson's autobiographical book, in which he publicly recounted his wartime experiences. Tsukamoto is a cult director known for extreme cyberpunk films, especially 'Tetsuo' (1989). In the Orizzonti section, Edoardo Gabbriellini presented 'La città dei vivi', loosely inspired by Nicola Lagioia's novel, reconstructing the murder of Luca Varani. The festival continues with these diverse narratives, highlighting both personal and societal traumas.