Nair's Reluctant Fundamentalist to open Venice Film Festival

Mira Nair's political thriller The Reluctant Fundamentalistwill open the Venice Film Festival's 69th edition which is poised to announce its full slimmed-down line-up of potentially strong titles on July 26.

Nair's adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's bestseller about a young Pakistani who goes from working on Wall Street to becoming deeply embroiled in conflict in his homeland stars Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Martin Donovan, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi, all of whom are expected on the Lido's red carpet on August 29 when Fundamentalistwill bow out of competition. 

Pic produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher is association with Doha Film Institute is being sold internationally by K5 International with Hal Sadoff for DFI and Bart Walker of Cinetic handling North America. 

Nair is a Venice aficionado who won the 2001 Golden Lion for Monsoon Wedding. 

New Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera in a statement praised Nair's work in Reluctant Fundamentalistfor "never being reluctant to take a difficult stand." 

Barbera's slimmed-down lineup is tipped to comprise a top notch batch of highly-anticipated U.S. pics, including Terence Malick's To The Wonder, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, and Robert Redford'sThe Company You Keep. 

Italian entries in competition will include Marco Bellocchio's Sleeping Beauty and Daniele Cipri's E' Stato Il Figlio." 

The 69th edition of Venice will run from August 29 to September 8.