Casey Affleck returned to the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday with his latest directorial effort, Company, which earned a 4½-minute ovation following its debut screening inside the Sala Grande.
There was an enthusiastic response, but Affleck and the cast left as applause was ongoing, and it died off.
Star Nick Nolte got an extra-rousing cheer when he was presented at the beginning of the screening. Ben Affleck was there to support his brother. sitting beside the cast and clapping enthusiastically and filming audience below.
Directed by Affleck from a screenplay he wrote with Ron Hansen, Company opens on a winter night in 1975. A mysterious woman named Evelyn arrives uninvited at a holiday gathering and tells the story of Tom, an aging hermit who rescued a stranded actress during a Colorado blizzard in 1953. To pass the night, the actress recounts an older tale of a farming couple who take in a troubled young drifter as a series of grisly murders spreads fear across the frontier.
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The official synopsis reads: “As the stories intertwine across generations, Company becomes a meditation on grief, vengeance, forgiveness and the quiet acts of compassion that can heal even the deepest wounds.”
Discussing the film’s premise at Tuesday’s official press conference, Affleck said the feature wasn’t an “explicitly political movie,” but he also isn’t “impervious to the world around me.”
“I was responding in part to all the raging conflicts in the world, and to things inside myself,” he said of the film’s origins.
Company stars Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Adelaide Clemens, Scoot McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan, Atticus Affleck and Indiana Affleck. Casey Affleck was last in Venice as an actor with Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild in 2022. His previous effort as a director was Light of My Life (2019), which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival.
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Producers on the project include Steven Schneider and Roy Lee via Spooky Features, Catherine Caylee Cowan, Dan Lawler, Affleck, Sean Patrick O’Reilly, K. Asher Levin, Enzo Marc, and Anthony Katagas.
The executive producers include Ben Ross via Image Nation Studios, Rami Yasin for Spooky Pictures, Ronnie Exley and Jeremy Ross via Rabbits Black, Ron McLeod, Dr. Terence Chan, Brian Meng, and Maria Breese for 3:33 Creative Productions, and Jonathan Miller.
Melanie Goodfellow contributed to this report.
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