De Palma spills and Clooney thrills at star-studded Venice Film Festival

DIRECTOR Brian De Palma stunned the Venice Film Festival yesterday with his harrowing new film about the horrors of the Iraq war.

Redacted is billed as a “fictional story inspired by true events”, following a group of US soldiers stationed in Iraq who rape a teenage girl and slaughter her family.

It is based on the notorious real-life incident in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in which soldiers raped a 14-year-old schoolgirl before setting her body alight and shooting dead her parents and five-year-old sister.