Tarantino, Coppola and Gallo at Venice film fest

In the absence of A-list stars, Hollywood's mavericks have arrived in Venice for the 67th annual film festival. Led by Quentin Tarantino, who is this year's film jury president, the likes of 21 Grams writer Guillermo Arriaga, director Robert Rodriguez and the actress-comedian Mila Kunis are among the US talent who will be on the Lido over the next 11 days.
 
The festival opens today with Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan which stars Kunis and Natalie Portman as rival New York ballet dancers.

Other American directors showing films at Venice include Sofia Coppola, whose highly anticipated comedy drama Somewhere (centred around Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel) is in competition, and actor-director Ben Affleck, who will premiere his Boston crime thriller, The Town.
 
Affleck's younger brother, Casey Affleck, weill present his documentary I'm Still Here about Joaquin Phoenix's decision to retire as an actor in 2008 and reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician.
 
Hollywood enfant terrible Vincent Gallo is also in town, both as an actor - playing a terror suspect plotting his escape in 72-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing - and as the director of two films. One of these, Promises Written in the Water, will compete for the Golden Lion.
 
The Oscar-nominated artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel is also in competition with his film Miral. It stars Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto as an orphaned Palestinian girl caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
 
Second only to Cannes in terms of prestige, the Venice film festival has suffered a lack of superstars in the past two years thanks to the economic downturn. Since 2008 many Hollywood producers have plumped for the cheaper option of taking their movies to the Toronto Film Festival, which overlaps with Venice.
 
Despite this, the Venice festival's director Marco Mueller is upbeat about its future. "I'm quite convinced that Venice is still strong," he told Reuters. "The visibility, the impact of a film is created here and the market potential of the film is then completely assessed in Toronto."
 
A total of 23 films will screen in competition for the Golden Lion, which will be announced on September 11. ·