HOLLYWOOD megastars Brad Pitt and George Clooney kick off this year’s Venice film festival today with the world premiere of the latest quirky offering from the Oscar-winning Coen brothers.

YOUSSEF Chahine, one of Egypt’s most lauded movie directors whose films over nearly five decades often went on Fellini-esque flights of fancy and tackled social ills and Islamic fundamentalism, died yesterday in Cairo. He was 82 years old.