Three British films aim for gold at Venice

Three British films have been selected for screening in the competition for the Golden Lion, the premier award at the Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 31 to September 10.

They are led by Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold, whose long-gestating new film is an adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel Wuthering Heights, starring Skins' Kaya Scoledario.

Artist Steve McQueen is following up his debut film Hunger with a sex-addiction drama scripted by Abi Morgan called Shame, featuring Hunger's lead actor Michael Fassbender opposite Carey Mulligan.

The third British competitor is a new version of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with Gary Oldman in the role made famous by Alec Guinness on TV in 1979. This has a more international flavour as the director is Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish film-maker responsible for the hit vampire movie Let the Right One In.

The opening night film is the political thriller The Ides of March, directed by and starring George Clooney, (see more below) and very loosely based on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The closing night film is Damsels in Distress, the fourth movie from cult American director Whit Stillman, who last made a film in 1998 and whose reputation still rests largely on his debut, Metropolitan, from 1990.

Other films showing include Madonna's feature directorial debut, W.E., about the relationship between Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII; Al Pacino’s latest directorial effort, Wilde Salome, a study of the controversial Oscar Wilde play starring The Tree of Life's Jessica Chastain; Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet in Carnage, the new film from Chinatown director Roman Polanski; Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Winslet (again) in the virus thriller Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh; A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's study of Sigmund Freud with Viggo Mortensen; Chicken With Plums, the new film from Persepolis animators Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud; Dark Horse, from black-comedy maestro Todd (Welcome to the Dollhouse) Solondz; The Moth Diaries, a boarding-school vampire thriller from American Psycho director Mary Harron; and Faust, the latest film from Russian auteur Aleksandr Sokurov.