Film-maker braves double Covid-19 quarantine for debut feature

VENICE • Australian director Roderick MacKay braved Covid-19 restrictions to make a "daunting" trip to the Venice Film Festival in Italy, where his debut feature The Furnace premiered last Friday.

MacKay, 33, had to get permission from the Australian authorities to leave his own country, quarantine in Rome for two weeks before travelling to Venice, and will have to quarantine again when he goes back to Australia.

"Travelling during this time in history is sort of just a little bit daunting for any purpose," MacKay, who filmed a video of his journey and self-isolation on his mobile for Reuters, said in an interview.

"But to be doing so, to come to a top-tier festival like Venice, to have your debut film premiere on the world stage, it's certainly a whole other layer of dauntingness," he said, adding he was happy and honoured to be at the world's oldest film festival.

The Furnace, which is in the Horizon section outside the main competition, tells the little-known story of cameleers brought to Australia by the British empire from India, Afghanistan and Persia in the second half of the 19th century and the local Aboriginal people they befriended.

Meanwhile, The Crown (2016 to present) star Vanessa Kirby said last Saturday that her latest role as a woman who loses her child after a home birth goes wrong was her scariest yet. The British actress plays alongside Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf in Pieces Of A Woman, which is premiering at the festival.

It opens with a 25-minute-long birth scene which was shot in one take by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo and written by his long-time partner Kata Weber.

The film is one of a series of deeply personal films competing for the Golden Lion top prize.

Kirby, 32, said trying to be true to the suffering of the women she talked to before the shoot was "really scary".

But she threw herself "really deep" into her first lead role in a movie in a way she had not done since she made her name playing Princess Margaret, sister of Britain's Elizabeth II, in the hit Netflix series.

Another movie making headlines at Venice is the retro British comedy The Duke, with critics last Saturday heaping praise on its stars Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent.

The yarn is based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of a disabled Newcastle pensioner called Kempton Bunton, played by Broadbent.

Bunton allegedly stole Spanish painter Francisco Goya's painting of the Duke of Wellington, the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, from London's National Gallery in 1961.

Mirren, who won a Best Actress Oscar for The Queen (2006), is his crotchety cleaning-lady wife Dolly, who tries to rein in his madder schemes and social campaigning.

The Duke's director Roger Michell, best known for Notting Hill (1999), said Bunton - whose family was consulted by the producers - was a rogue in the best British eccentric tradition, someone driven by a Robin Hood sense of justice.

"It's about a small man who stands up and speaks truth to power," the South Africa-born director said.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE