75th Venice Film Festival Opens with Atonement

The 75th Venice Film Festival opens today with the premiere of Joe Wright's Atonement. The film, adapted from the bestselling novel by Ian McEwan, features an all-star British cast including Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave. The fest will close with the gangster-thriller Blood Brothers by first-time director Alexi Tan.

Twenty-two films will be screening in competition -- all of them world premieres. Ang Lee returns to the festival with Lust, Caution, a Chinese-language spy-thriller set in World War II. Lee won the Golden Lion and Best Director award for Brokeback Mountain in 2005. Other highlights of the 11-day festival include two dramas dramas inspired by the Iraq War, Brian De Palma's Redacted and Paul Haggis' In The Valley of Elah, star-studded pictures like Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, featuring George Clooney, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck and Sam Shepard, as well as Kenneth Branagh's thriller Sleuth with Michael Caine and Jude Law. Asian films in the line-up include Chinese director Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises and Takeshi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, starring none other than Quentin Tarantino.

New films from Woody Allen (Cassandra's Dream) and Claude Chabrol (La Fille Coupee) will screen outside of competition. Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou heads this year's jury.