Looking For Grace to have world premiere at Venice

A drama starring Richard Roxburgh and Radha Mitchell has made the cut for top honours at the Venice Film Festival.

The star of Looking For Grace, Odessa Young, also stars in Simon Stone's drama, The Daughter, which. will screen at the coming Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.

Sue Brooks’ feature film starring Richard Roxburgh and Odessa Young, Looking for Grace, will have its world premiere as a selection for the Official Competition at the 2015 Venice International Film Festival.

It is only the second Australian film to be selected for the official competition at Venice in the past decade — the other being John Curran’s Tracks in 2013 — and is one of only four to be selected in competition for the prestigious Golden Lion in the past two decades.

Brooks, who directed Road To Nhill and Japanese Story, wrote and directed the film about a runaway teen (played by Young) followed to Western Australia’s wheat belt by her parents (Roxburgh and Radha Mitchell).

The film is produced by Lizzette Atkins, Sue Taylor and Alison Tilson and will be released on January 26 next year.

Michael Rowe’s Early Winter, Bentley Dean and Martin Butler’s Tanna and Simon Stone’s The Daughter had previously been selected for the sidebar Venice Days and Venice Critics’ Week.

The Daughter, a Tasmanian-set drama starring Young, Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill and Ewen Leslie has also been selected, alongside Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker to screen at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

The Dressmaker, starring Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving, will have its world premiere in the red carpet Gala Presentations section, and The Daughter will have its North American premiere in the Special Presentations section in Canada.

The new US drama directed by The Sapphires’s Wayne Blair (and shot by Samson and Delilah’s Warwick Thornton), Septembers of Shiraz, starring Salma Hayek and Adrien Brody will also have its world premiere in the Gala Presentations in Toronto while Naomi Watts’s anticipated Academy Award contender, Demolition, will be Toronto’s Opening Night Film. Films starring Joel Edgerton (Black Mass) and Nicole Kidman (The Family Fang) will also feature in the Special Presentations program at Toronto.

The Venice Film Festival runs 2-12 September and TIFF 10-20 September.