Instead of “Wishing on a Star,” Slovak filmmaker Péter Kerekes is making his dreams come true and returning to the Lido – and the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival – with his latest film.
Peter Kerekes – 107 MOTHERS – 78th Venice Film Festival
In 2021, Kerekes won the Horizons Award for Best Screenplay alongside Ivan Ostrochovský for “107 Mothers.” Now he’s back in Venice with “Wishing on a Star,” but he didn’t immediately seize the opportunity to follow Luciana de Leoni D’Asparedo, a Neapolitan astrologer who asks her clients to take life-changing trips on their birthdays to be “reborn.”
“It felt like an absurd story,” Kerekes jokes.
“My Austrian producer Ralph Wieser kept asking me to work with Erica Barbiani on a film about astrology. She wanted me to direct it. I said ‘no’ for three years. ‘Come on, I don’t believe in it. I don’t even read horoscopes!’ But I wanted to be polite, so we went to dinner with Luciana. When I met her, I changed my mind,” he tells Variety.
