George Clooney’s The Ides Of March will open the 68th Venice Film Festival starting on August 31. The movie will screen as part of the festival’s top competition vying for the Golden Lion Award. Clooney, who has written and directed The Ides of March, is also playing an important part in it along with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Woodwill among others.

Based on Beau Willimon’s work Farragut North, Clooney’s film unfolds sometime in the near future, bang in the middle of American Democratic primaries in Ohio for the presidential elections. Focussing on a young, idealistic Press secretary (Gosling) working for the presidential candidate, Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), the plot uncovers a web of deceit and corruption in American politics.

Gautaman Bhaskaran

The Ides Of March is the fourth movie helmed by Clooney after Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002), Good Night, And Good Luck (2005, also at Venice competition) and Leatherlands (2008).

Clooney has acted in several films, including The Thin Red Line, The Good German, Michael Clayton, Burn After Reading, Up in the Air and the Ocean’s series among others.

He is expected to be at the August 31 opening ceremony on the island of Lido, off Venice.

The Festival will run till September 10.

Gautaman Bhaskaran has been covering the Venice Film Festival for many years now, and will attend it this year as well