Feature: Venice Int'l Film Festival showcasing travails of children

Various films at the ongoing Venice International Film Festival show the harsh life of children hit by war and contradictions of the adult world.

Australian director Sue Brooks' film Looking for Grace, which premiered on Thursday in the competition section Venezia 72, tells the story of a 16-year-old girl who runs away from home.

In her journey, Grace experiences betrayal and loneliness, while learning that life is confusing and arbitrary, though wonderful.

Emerging Australian actress Odessa Young, who played Grace, said the main reason why she was attracted by the script was because of its emerging picture of the complexity of the world of teenagers.

"Teenagers are not generally treated with complexity or with respect," Young told a press conference at the Lido of Venice.

"I liked the script because Grace is at such a point in her life where everything is new and exciting, she is struggling to discover herself and the people around her," she said.

Some spectators told Xinhua they liked the way Looking for Grace left the confused messiness of life with its lies, secrets, small and large grief and love, on screen. The audience of journalists and cinema critics in Venice broke in applause after the film.

Brooks, the director, confirmed that she wanted to make a film like life as she experiences it, with no heroes.

She told the press conference that every one of her actors made the characters their own.

"They were no longer interpreting a script. They were their own people, with their own problems and their own lives," she said.

Beasts of No Nation by American director Cary Fukunaga, which premiered on the same day in the Venezia 72 section, also puts the fragility of a kid at the center.

The film follows the loss of innocence of Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African country, as he attempts to find the remains of a childhood that seem so out of reach. The film is based on a highly-acclaimed novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala.

The audience in Venice met Agu playing with his older brother, making mischief with his friends at a refugee camp and enjoying dinner with his family.

But the happy routine of this childhood is shattered when army troops from the capital city arrive to squelch a rebellion against the country's corrupt regime. Agu escapes to the forest where he is discovered by a company of young rebels and is forced to become a soldier and take part in ruthless tribal warfare.

Asked at his film's press conference if exposing the plight of child soldiers could bring attention to the subject, Fukunaga said films do have the power to create awareness and positive change. But the issue of child soldiers, he added, is the way in which the irregular nature of many conflicts is waged now.

U.S. director Brady Corbet's The Childhood of a Leader, scheduled to be presented at the festival on Saturday in the Orizzonti section -- dedicated to the latest cinema trends -- will also take a look at how harsh experiences witnessed in childhood can influence adult actions.

Inspired by the early childhood events of many of the great dictators of the 20th century, the film will follow the development of a terrifying ego in a child when his U.S. family settles into the French countryside to work for the U.S. government at the end of World War I. Endit