ITALY: Hollywood actor Richard Gere arrives at Venice Film Festival to present Bosnia war movie ' The Hunting Party'

Record ID: 497744

  • Title: ITALY: Hollywood actor Richard Gere arrives at Venice Film Festival to present Bosnia war movie ' The Hunting Party'
  • Date: 7th September 2007
  • Summary: VENICE LIDO, ITALY (SEPTEMBER 3, 2007) (REUTERS) HOWARD WALKING AND TALKING TO FANS GERE SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS PHOTO OF GERE GERE SPEAKING TO MAN IN WHEELCHAIR AND LEAVING VARIOUS OF KRUGER SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS
  • Embargoed: 22nd September 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Reuters ID: LVABESE9XXJB5A4DF6FPYQZR1T49
  • Story Text: Actors Richard Gere and Diane Kruger arrive at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of "The Hunting Party".
    Actor and activist Richard Gere on Monday (September 03) arrived at the Venice Film Festival to introduce "The Hunting Party", a film in which he chases a fugitive Bosnian war criminal, taking on another contentious international issue -- fugitives from the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
    In the film Gere plays war reporter Simon Hunt, who, together with cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) and rookie reporter Benjamin, (Jesse Eisenberg) sets off on a sometimes humorous search for Bosnia's most wanted war criminal -- "The Fox."
    The movie was developed from an Esquire magazine article by war correspondent Scott Anderson. Anderson and four other journalists reunited in Sarajevo in 2000 and came up with a sketchy plan to find top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic.
    To their surprise they came closer than they ever expected to finding Karadzic and had a run in with the CIA, which left them with the impression that Washington did not really want to catch war criminals.
    Gere said it was his profound connection with the people he'd met during the Kosovo conflict that had attracted him to the film.
    "It had a deep resonance for me because I'd been in Kosovo and Macedonia and Albania during the Kosovo crisis and I was in the camps there and I made a lot of friends and felt an emotional connection, a psychological connection to the people of the former Yugoslavia, so when the script came I gave it more attention than I might normally," Gere told reporters during a news conference.
    Karadzic is a former Bosnian Serb political leader who has been indicted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal for genocide, but he remains on the run more than a decade after the war ended.
    The movie's director, Richard Shepard, said that while difficult, it was important to base the film in Bosnia, sending a strong signal to its people that this subject had not been forgotten.
    "Yes, it's a touchy subject and not everyone was thrilled. But, at the same time I think a lot of people were happy that we were pointing a light on the fact, on this international outrage that a man who is in the Hague indicted for genocide, we should all be ashamed of ourselves that he continues to roam free in a country that is tiny. He writes plays and books, he eats at restaurants we actually ate at. It's a joke," said Shepard.
    Gere added he was fascinated about the election of unsuitable people as leaders, saying his own country was no exception.
    "What is interesting to me is how the Mladics and Karadzics and the bad people amongst us end up our leaders. Even in my own country, how did we elect Bush twice, how is that possible? So, that's interesting to me,"
    he said.
    'The Hunting Party' is screening out of competition at this year's Venice Film Festival and will be presented at a special midnight screening on Monday night.
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