gshc2020.com

“It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” said Gyllenhaal, the festival’s competition jury president this year, when asked about the dearth of women in Venice’s selection. “Also, could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed high art?”

“I really am walking in with a question as to why there are so few women in the main competition,” she later added.

This year’s competition has drawn scrutiny for its stark gender imbalance. Just one of the original list of 20 Golden Lion contenders — May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown — is directed by a woman, down from six female-directed competition titles last year. The festival later added to the competition with the Gaza documentary NAZA, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, bringing the total to two. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera acknowledged the disparity when announcing the lineup, calling it a recent low for the festival.

But Gyllenhaal also tipped her hat to Venice for selecting her as the event’s jury chief this year. “Alberto and Julia asking me to be the head of the main jury competition — after the two films in particular that I have made — is a very important thing to consider, too,” she said.

Gyllenhaal’s jury includes Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose acclaimed Palestinian drama The Voice of Hind Rajab won last year’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize; Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg; film scholar Francesco Casetti; French director Xavier Giannoli; Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat; and Hong Kong filmmaking legend Johnnie To. 

Together they will select the Golden Lion winner and Venice’s other main competition prizes from a field that includes Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch drama Ink, Robert Pattinson thriller Primetime, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s much-anticipated return Possible Love and NAZA, among others.

Gyllenhaal has a significant history with Venice. Her 2021 feature directing debut, The Lost Daughter, premiered in competition on the Lido and earned her the festival’s best screenplay prize before going on to receive three Oscar nominations. She also has a project in Venice this year. Her Marilyn Monroe-inspired advertorial short Flesh Impact, starring Dakota Johnson, Ellen Burstyn and Peter Sarsgaard, will screen out of competition later in the event.

The press conference proceeded after some confusion during the weekend over whether the jury’s meeting with the media — a staple of all major film festivals — would take place at all. Venice organizers stated on Saturday that the jury presser might be scrapped due to a “scheduling conflict” involving a jury member; but by Sunday, the festival said a solution had been found, and the briefing would be held as usual. 

The brief interregnum stirred industry speculation about the role politics might play at the 83rd edition, as various global conflicts — the war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Iran war — loom in the background of the world’s oldest film festival. Festival chief Barbera has described this year’s lineup as the “most political” of recent years. 

Venice’s blue-chip festival peers, meanwhile, showed earlier this year the two directions a major cultural event might take amid this globally fraught moment. In February, the Berlin festival became engulfed by political discord and social media point-scoring after jury president Wim Wenders told reporters during the opening press conference that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics.” But the Cannes Film Festival later went ahead in May with plenty of carefully calibrated political statements from filmmakers but notably less acrimony. 

Gyllenhaal was asked near the outset of the Venice press conference whether she feels filmmakers have a responsibility to be political amid the world’s current challenges. 

“We could say, ‘How are we possibly here talking about movies right now, when the world is in a state of emergency?'” she replied. “To me, the answer has something to do with empathy. I think that film allows an opening into an opportunity to find empathy inside of ourselves. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any subject or any filmmaker that shouldn’t be heard. I think we can challenge ourselves to hear stories about the most corrupt, the most perverse people, because it opens up the opportunity to find empathy for those people — and even to look at the ways in which we might have a little bad guy inside us, a little perversity inside us, a little corruption inside us, fight it as we might.”

She added: “I think that if movies really are an honest look into other people’s experience, then they are fundamentally, unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things.”

The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival officially opens Wednesday evening on the Lido with a ceremony that will fete George Clooney with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement and conclude with the world premiere of Boyle’s Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy. The festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.   %!s()

The 95-minute drama, set against India’s sand mining crisis, follows 12-year-old Maya (newcomer Maya Mehta) as she returns to India with her mother to reunite with her estranged father, a sand mining businessman, and forms a bond with Kiran, a young worker.

After an accident, a police investigation turns Maya into a key witness, with her father relying on her to absolve him. As her mother unravels, Maya uncovers a pattern of silence and exploitation that leads her to confront her father’s deception and her family’s complicity.

Adnani has said the title is rooted in the sand mining crisis in India, where extraction of river sand has accelerated erosion and contributed to flooding. “Sand, in this world, is currency — and many people are unaware that we are running out of it, and that its extraction is causing land erosion worldwide,” she writes in the film’s production notes.

In the clip, Maya questions her father’s view of what holds their family together. “We are family. We are connected by blood,” he tells her. “Is that what you think connects us?” she replies, before naming what she believes actually binds them: “The house, money.”

Mehta, making her screen debut, stars alongside Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub (Article 15, Jogi, Raanjhanaa) as Rohan and Ellora Torchia (Midsommar, Ali & Ava, House of the Dragon) as Priti, with Krish Raj More as Kiran, Ravi Patil as Dadya and Jyoti Dogra as Art.

Adnani is a Chilean-born, Indian-origin writer-director based in London. Her short film White Ant premiered at Sundance, was longlisted for a BIFA, won Best UK Short at Raindance in 2023 and was acquired by Canal+. She is a London Film School and Berlinale Talents alumna.

Our Share of Sand is produced by Sara Bonakdar for Fifth Mirror Pictures, with Alan McAlex, Balthazar de Ganay, Giorgos Karnavas and Michael Graf also producing. Developed with Film4 and the BFI, the UK-Greek co-production was shot in India, co-produced with Karnavas’ Heretic and made in association with McAlex’s Suitable Pictures (Santosh, Sister Midnight). Global Constellation is handling international sales.

Check out the clip of Our Share of Sand below.

Emergency services responded to reports of a shooting at a home in Merrylands West at about 3.15pm on Wednesday, where a man believed to be in his 30s sustained a gunshot wound.

The victim, who was yet to be formally identified, was treated by paramedics but died at the scene.

Police said the property was a location known to police for organised crime, but said “the victim has no links that we’re aware of to organised crime”.

At a press conference, Supt Simon Glasser said it was unclear what the man who was shot was doing at the location or his connection to the residents.

“The person who we believe has been shot has no adverse holdings with police. People that are linked to this address are known to … organised crime,” he said.

“It’s very early on in the investigation, however, there is a possibility that the wrong person has been shot by these offenders.”

The alleged shooting marks the second incident of its kind this week.

On Tuesday, 23-year-old Marco Tapia was shot dead in his bed as his family slept at about 3.40am after multiple attackers were believed to have forced their way into a two-storey home in Glen Alpine, near Campbelltown, in south-west Sydney.

That case was being investigated as a case of mistaken identity, police said, because Tapia was not known to authorities and had nothing more than a traffic offence on his record.

His martial arts gym remembered him in a public tribute overnight.

“We lost a real one today,” they wrote, adding: “Rest easy Marco, one of us forever.”

The Alameddine network, a notorious crime family, and the Coconut Cartel, an emerging crime-for-hire network, have allegedly become embroiled in a feud, spilling into shootings across Sydney in recent months.

Acting Supt Gretchen Atkins of Campbelltown police said on Tuesday she was aware of online posts about the Glen Alpine case and said everything was under consideration.

The NSW opposition leader, Kellie Sloane, said the incidents showed gangland violence was out of control.

“We need to be very clear about the threat on our streets and that is dangerous organised criminals … innocent people have been in the firing line way too often,” she said.

“Whether it is a young man, a student sleeping in his bed at night [or] a grandfather who’s kidnapped and murdered,” referring to the Sydney grandfather Chris Baghsarian, who was taken from his home on 13 February and later found dead.

She suggested the government was not doing enough to stop the shootings.

But the police minister, Yasmin Catley, criticised Sloane, whose electorate is in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, over her position on the state’s gun buyback scheme, launched after December’s Bondi massacre.

“The member for Vaucluse, we must remember, is also the same person that wants to squash [national gun buyback reform],” Catley said.

“She wants more guns on the street and wants to blame the police for not doing their job … I’m not tolerating that, I won’t have a bar of that.” %!s()

Those are all important conversations. But the question I always come back to is a much simpler one: What are you trying to accomplish? That’s where every AI conversation should begin.

Every company is different. Even organizations in the same industry are trying to solve different problems because they’re starting from different places and they’re working toward different business objectives. That’s why I don’t believe there’s one AI roadmap that works for everyone.

Start with the business objective.

Before you decide what technology to invest in, you should understand what success looks like for your business. One of the biggest opportunities AI creates is the ability to solve business problems faster than we’ve been able to in the past. The technology is moving quickly, new capabilities are showing up every week and organizations have more choices than ever before. More choices also make it more important to stay focused on the outcome you’re trying to achieve.

When I sit down with a customer, I'm usually not asking about AI in the first five minutes. I want to understand the business. Are they trying to reduce costs? Improve customer response times? Help engineers spend less time on repetitive work? Give executives better visibility into their data? Once we understand what they're trying to accomplish, we can have a much more productive conversation about the technology that helps them get there.

AI doesn't exist by itself. It becomes part of your overall technology environment, your security strategy, your data architecture and the way people work every day. That's another reason I encourage organizations to begin with the business objective. The technology decisions become much clearer when you understand how AI fits into the larger environment you're building.

Every investment should create business value.

Organizations are making significant investments in AI, and that’s often the right move. But if you're going to invest in AI, you should know how you're going to measure success before you spend the first dollar.

That doesn't mean every AI project has to deliver the same type of return. Some investments will focus on efficiency. Others will improve customer experiences, strengthen security or give employees better tools to do their jobs. The important thing is understanding the business outcome you're working toward before making the investment and having a way to measure whether you're actually achieving it.

AI should earn its place in the business the same way every other technology investment does. It should solve a problem, improve a process or create a measurable advantage for the organization.

A manufacturer may decide the biggest opportunity is improving production efficiency. A healthcare organization may be focused on giving clinicians faster access to information. A financial institution may be looking for better ways to identify fraud or strengthen customer service. The underlying technology may be similar, but the business outcome is different. That's what drives the investment decision.

Leadership defines the destination.

One thing I always encourage leaders to do is define what success looks like before the implementation begins. When people understand the objective, they make better decisions because they understand what they're building toward and how success will be measured.

That doesn't mean leadership needs to have all the technical answers. It means leadership needs to be clear about the business outcome they're trying to achieve. Once that direction is established, technology teams can evaluate the right solutions, architects can determine how AI fits into the broader technology environment and employees can identify new ways to improve the work they do every day.

Organizations make much faster progress when everyone is working toward the same business outcome. Decisions become easier because there's a shared understanding of what success looks like, how it will be measured and why the investment matters in the first place. Technology teams, business leaders and employees all have a common direction, which creates much stronger alignment across the organization.

Keep the focus where it matters most.

That's why I keep coming back to the same question: What are you trying to accomplish?

Every technology decision becomes easier once that answer is clear. You have a way to evaluate investments, measure success and keep the organization focused on the business objective. The technology will continue to evolve, but the first question shouldn't change. Organizations that stay grounded in what they're trying to accomplish will always be in a better position to decide where AI creates value and then enable it to do so.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

As Benjamin Halona’s sister, Gloria Halona, and her daughter, Samantha Vandever, put it, that is the least he deserved after the quiet dignity that he showed becoming a widower in February and subsequently grappling with health problems that required him to use a walker and a wheelchair to move around.

“He was a really strong person,” Gloria Halona said of her brother in a telephone interview that her and Vandever granted on Monday. “And, even though he didn’t have a lot, he was happy.”

The pair did not mind sharing new details about the 20 August bear attack that killed Benjamin Halona, 67, as he recovered from a devastating seizure that had drastically limited his mobility.

They said Halona stayed back at his home in the Navajo Nation community of Crystal, New Mexico, while his stepson, Casey, had gone to the post office.

Casey was brought into Halona’s life by his wife, Bernadine, who died six months earlier from illness. He heard Halona lock the front door, according to Gloria and Samantha.

But, when Casey returned home, they said, the door was ajar, and there was a bear inside turning its nose toward him.

Casey instinctively locked himself inside his room; barricaded the door there with a dresser and other heavy items; hid in a crawlspace in his closet; and used a cellphone to dial for emergency help. He also called Gloria and Samantha, who recounted driving over to him and seeing the bear outside the home.

Samantha said she was driving and honked the horn at the bear at her mother’s behest. The bear fled, and a police officer shot the animal, they said. The mother and daughter then went inside the home and encountered a “horrific scene” that made it clear the bear they had seen had just killed Benjamin.

The fact that Benjamin’s walker was inside his room undisturbed made them wonder if he spent his final moments hearing something at the front door and unlocking it mistakenly believing it was his stepson struggling to get inside.

“It was a lot for us,” Samantha said.

A Navajo Nation police department spokesperson on Monday declined to discuss Halona’s death, saying the agency had released what it could in a statement on the day of the bear attack.

That statement said a bear had killed a man in Crystal, had fled into nearby woods, and was killed by police. It also extended condolences to the man’s family.

Regardless, Samantha and Gloria said they had been coping as much as possible by recalling much more pleasant memories of Benjamin.

He sold tamales locally that were a community favorite, they said. They said he was also fiercely proud of having served his Native American reservation as a wildland firefighter – and of the nicknames given to him by his friends and loved ones: Ponjo, Mountain Man and Tamale Man.

Halona’s fandom of the Grammy-winning country singer Waylon Jennings was also a major aspect of his personality, Gloria said. She spoke about how her brother got to share a personal moment with Jennings months before the latter man’s February 2002 death.

Jennings had traveled to Navajo Nation at the time to perform at a fair. Family members managed to arrange a brief meeting, which was photographed and saw Halona and Jennings sing Love of the Common People, which the crooner famously recorded.

“We’re living in the love of the common people, smiles from the heart of a family man,” some that song’s lyrics say. “Daddy’s gonna buy you a dream to cling to, Mama’s gonna love you just as much as she can.”

Jennings complimented Halona by telling him that he sounded better than country legend Willie Nelson, Gloria said. She added: “That was probably the happiest moment of Benjamin’s life.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Halona’s fatal bear mauling prompted an intense community reaction.

The Navajo people, for one, regard bears as sacred – and here, they had lost both Halona and a spiritual animal.

There also had evidently not been a deadly bear mauling in New Mexico since 2001, according to a comprehensive list with information about ursine attacks. That 2001 case, furthermore, had been the first fatal New Mexico bear attack in a century, the Associated Press reported.

Nonetheless, eight days before Halona’s death, New Mexico wildlife officials had warned of “an increase in the number of bears involved in human-bear conflict throughout [the state] in 2026”.

They asked the public to avoid leaving garbage and fallen or rotten fruit out, which could draw bears into populated areas amid severe drought conditions that New Mexico was experiencing.

Meanwhile, Gloria and Samantha said his survivors – among them two siblings, four children, five stepchildren, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild – were finding support in each other. They said they had also drawn a measure of comfort from the strong attendance at community memorials organized in Halona’s honor as well as at his funeral services on 29 August.

“He endured a lot in his life – especially during his death,” Vandever remarked of her uncle. “And we’re all heartbroken that this had to happen to him.” %!s()