65th Venice International Film Festival the longest film at this festival (or maybe any) goes to Philippine director Lav Diaz's "Melancholia", with a running time of some seven-and-a-half hours, and which is included in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section. A highlight of this year's Italian retrospective is a restored version of Federico Fellini's 1952 comedy "The White Sheik" with forty minutes of newly discovered footage. The international juries of the 65th Venice International Film Festival were composed as follows: Main Competition ("Venezia 65") Horizons ("Orizzonti") Opera Prima ("Luigi de Laurentiis" Award for a Debut Film) The competitive section of the official selection is an international competition
Songs of Life Festival by Bulgaria. When trains came to take 49,000 more Bulgarian Jews to the death camps, the Bulgarian people resisted the demands of the German government and refused to allow their Jewish neighbors to be sent to concentration camps in what was the single largest non-deportation of Jews during World War II. The Songs of Life Festival debuted in November 2008 on the 65th anniversary of the rescue in the Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Plovdiv and in Petah Tikva and Jerusalem in Israel. Ernest Bloch’s choral-orchestral piece, "Sacred Service", a Jewish work, was performed. During the inaugural festival, 49,000 flowers