VENICE () - Brad Pitt and George Clooney hit the red carpet on Wednesday with their latest motion picture "Burn After Reading," a satirical comedy by Oscar winners the Coen brothers which opens this year's Venice film festival.
The actors will bring A-list asterisk power to the 11-day event which features everything from obscure Asian prowess house picture palace to Hollywood heavyweights.
Although on that point are five-spot U.S. films in the main competition lineup of 21, they all represent lower-budget, "independent" cinema as opposed to the bad studios, which are non in Venice this clock time around.
Festival director Marco Mueller brushed aside concerns that Venice, which faces stiff competition from the Toronto film fete starting next month and the Rome film festival in October, was struggling to procure top titles and gift.
Mueller, who with his team saw around 3,000 films which were whittled down to 55 in the prescribed selection, said the light Hollywood studio presence was partly down to the 14-week writers' strike that ended in February.
"We have five-spot American films in contest and almost of those films are films with stars, so in a way the strike only meant that some of the larger studio films will but be released late December or January," he told .
"But American movie theatre is selfsame much at the sum of the program."
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