Hollywood megastars George Clooney and Brad Pitt helped kick off the 65th Venice film festival, taking to the red carpet along with their directors the Coen brothers in “Burn After Reading.”

After signing autographs for adoring fans outside Lido’s Sala Grande, they swept into the Lido’s Sala Grande along with Joel and Ethan Coen and co-stars Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand for the film’s world premiere.

The latest quirky offering by the Coen brothers, winners of four Oscars this year for “No Country for Old Men,” is being shown at the competition.

Also starring John Malkovich, the film’s kaleidoscopic plot revolves around two gym employees who stumble on the memoirs of a retired CIA agent and try to sell the manuscript, one of them desperate to make herself over with cosmetic surgery.

For Clooney the film completes an “idiot trilogy” with the Coen brothers after his roles in their “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and “Intolerable Cruelty.”
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This year’s Venice Mostra will also feature stars such as Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, as well as new works by top filmmakers such as Takeshi Kitano and Jonathan Demme.

Oscar winners Theron and Basinger play in “The Burning Plain,” Mexican-born screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s first shot at directing.

Of the 52 films selected, 21 will be competing for the Golden Lion top prize, including the latest films from Japanese directors Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki, to be awarded on September 6.

The films in competition “will give us a state of the art of what cinema is today,” said veteran German director Wim Wenders, the president of the jury.

Vowing that the jury would be impartial, he said: “I also very much hope that our decisions will not be biased by any nationalistic feelings whatsoever.”

Jury member Johnnie To of Hong Kong noted: “It’s a long time since I’ve watched more than 20 movies in 10 days. “I’ll have to try not to confuse my dreams with the movies that I see.

He added: “For me a good movie for myself is a good movie for everyone.”

The jury also includes Italian actress Valeria Golino, Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and US filmmaker John Landis.

Both Kitano’s “Achilles and the Tortoise” and Miyazaki’s animated feature “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” are tipped as favourites for the top prize.

Other strong runners include US director Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler”, starring Mickey Rourke, and French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder’s thriller set in Japan, “L’Inju: La Bete dans l’Ombre” (The Beast in the Shadow).

Meanwhile “Silence of the Lambs” director Demme will present the much anticipated comedy “Rachel Getting Married”, starring Anne Hathaway as a troubled young woman showing up at her estranged sister’s wedding.

An African film in the running is “Teza” by US-based Ethiopian veteran Haile Gerima tracing the life of a young Ethiopian from his student days in West Germany in the 1970s to his return to his native village at the age of 60.

From north Africa is Franco-Algerian cineaste Tariq Teguia’s “Gabba” (Inland).

This year’s festival is to be dedicated to Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, who died on July 27 aged 82.

Chahine got “the cinema of the Arab world off to a new start, leading it in a new direction and taking all the risks on his shoulders,” festival director Marco Mueller said. “Between truth and cinematic dream, he progressively outlined an extraordinary film autobiography.”

A career Golden Lion has been reserved for Italian director Ermanno Olmi, 77, whose 1978 neo-realist epic “L’Albero degli Zoccoli” (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) won the Golden Palm at Cannes and many other awards.