Recently, the 76th Venice International Film Festival, which will open on August 28, officially announced the list of shortlisted films in the main competition unit. Co-produced by Boehner Pictures Group and Regent Pictures, directed by James Gray and starring Brad Pitt, the space science fiction film "Interstellar Exploration" will compete for this year's Golden Lion Awards. Science fiction genre films have rarely been shortlisted, and whether "Interstellar Exploration" (provisional translation) can win the award this time has also aroused the expectations of many netizens. The filmmakers released a new trailer last week, and the response was enthusiastic, this time with the announcement of a new set of stills in conjunction with the announcement of the Venice finalists.
The story of "Interstellar Exploration" revolves around Roy, an astronaut played by Pitt. Roy has been a reclusive personality since childhood, his father (Tommy Lee Jones) left Earth 20 years ago to explore Neptune to explore extraterrestrial life but mysteriously disappeared, he was told that his father may have hidden secrets during the mission, which is related to the safety of mankind. So Roy goes into space and travels through the solar system to find his father, and in the process of searching, he discovers the reason for his father's mission failure and the secret that poses an extreme threat to The Earth.
The film's English title, Ad Astra, means "to the stars" in Latin, and it is derived from the famous Latin proverb per aspera ad astra. Director Gray believes that humans never belong to space, but the desire for interstellar travel is indeed one of the original dreams that drove humanity. He has previously revealed that the film will have the "most realistic" depiction of interstellar travel in the history of cinema, which will show "the unfavorable side of space for human beings". Gray won the Venice Silver Lion in 1994 for his work Little Odessa.
Co-produced by Boehner Pictures and Regency Pictures, directed by James Gray, director of Lost City of Z, and starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, "Interstellar Exploration" will be released in North America on September 20, 2019.