Hollywood star George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are to open this year’s Venice Film Festival – the 70th in the event’s history.

The Hollywood pair, who star in techno-thriller Gravity, will come from cinematic outer space to the Lido where the festival – the world’s oldest – is being held.

There will be 53 new feature films this year, all but two world premieres, with 33 countries represented in the overall line-up.

Five US, four British and three Italian films are among the 20 competing for the coveted Golden Lion, which will be decided by a jury headed by Oscar-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci.

The entries include Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem” starring Christoph Waltz and Matt Damon, Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” featuring Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Frears’ “Philomena” with Judi Dench and “Joe” starring Nicolas Cage.

Festival director Alberto Barbera pointed out that this year’s event also has a political element to it and will explore the current “economic crisis” in Europe and the “crisis in values” in modern society.

“The economy is, of course, one of the elements of this crisis, one of the most important elements but it is not only the crisis of the economy, it’s the crisis of the values which is much more important and it seems that contemporary cinema is very much aware of this situation,” he said.

“All the most interesting film makers are referring to this situation and are working on it, telling stories that are dealing with this.”

The festival, which lasts under September 7, was originally set up under Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a propaganda vehicle, with Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels among the original guests.

“It was a different historical moment,” said Barbera.

“We had Mussolini as the head of the government so the festival was a sort of window to show the power of the regime in Italy … and most of the awards went to films from Italy and Germany at the same time and so it was very political.”

[adrotate banner=”38″]