The 66th Venice Film Festival, being held September 2-12, will, like last year, have a healthy presence of Italian and American Films. In an edition designed to claims the role of cinema as "culture of the contemporary", the director of the Mostra, Marco Muller, released a program on Thursday which gives "special interest to the films which are aware of the their obligation to show" the power of cinema.

Giusseppe Tornatore and Patrice Chereau are competing for the jury’s favour with Todd Solondz, Werner Herzog, Fatih Akin and Michael Moore. The last two have chosen Venice for the first time to present their latest productions, the feature film Soul Kitchen and the documentary Capitalism: A Love Story , respectively.

Spanish presence will be limited to the parallel section “Venice Days”, in which Gordos by Daniel Sanchez Arevalo and Celda 211 by Daniel Monzon will be presented. In the official section, but out of competition, will be participating Rec2 , sequel to the hit horror film directed by the Catalonians Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza. Also out-of-competition will be shown the latest by Steven Soderbergh, The Informant and Oliver Stone’s South of the Border .

Veteran Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore will have the honour of inaugurating the Mostra with his film Baaria , an epic drama set in his native Sicily and a cast including names like Monica Bellucci and Angela Molina.

The Golden Lion Award will be given to 3D animation specialist filmmakers John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich and Ash Brannon.

The difficult task of selecting the winners will go to jury presided by the two-time Golden Lion winner Ang Lee. Alongside the Thai director will be French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, star of the feature film Sans toit ni loi and winner of the Golden Lion in 1985, Italian director Lialiana Cavani, fantasy film master Joe Dante, Indian director Anurag Kashyap, and Italian singer and director Luciano Ligabu.

Presentation of the Mostra’s programme was marked by the protest of Italian actors and directors in the face of budget cuts to the arts. Stage managers, script-writers, long-time and newcomer actors all congregated at the doors of the hotel where the cinema event was presented. They sought to draw attention to the fact that “the Government has cut support to the Performance Fund, closing the curtain forever, which is why we will also be protesting in Venice during the Festival,” as they announced.