Rome, July 24 - The 71st Venice Film Festival will open next month with a wide range of international offerings, including a biopic on iconic Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini starring brooding American actor Willem Dafoe.

Organizers of the world's oldest film festival unveiled the event's lineup Thursday by announcing that the program will be opened on August 27 with the premier of Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's latest work, the black comedy 'Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance'.

Starring American actors Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, Birdman tells the tale of a down-and-out actor who recalls happier days when he played a superhero. Birdman also stars British actresses Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough.

Hong Kong director Ann Hui's 'The Golden Era', a story of a radical writer living in a period of Japanese imperialism in China, will close the Lido-based festival on September 6.

Many of the films in this year's lineup deal with the dark subjects of economic recession, hardship, and war, said festival director Alberto Barbera said as the lineup was unveiled in Rome.

Still, selecting just 55 films from 1,500 contenders was "painful", he said.

The subject matter, like the national origins of the films, ranges widely and includes Abel Ferrara's anticipated 'Pasolini' with Dafoe portraying the respected writer, poet and film director Pasolini, who was murdered in 1975; and 'The Cut' by Turkish director Fatih Akin, which tells the tale of a mute father searching for his daughters. French film composer Alexandre Desplat will head the main jury panel that includes British actor Tim Roth, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, Italian actor-director Carlo Verdone, and Chinese actress and director Joan Chen.

The international lineup also includes Swedish director Roy Andersson's 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence' while David Oelhoffen's 'Loin des Hommes' stars Viggo Mortensen as a teacher who becomes friendly with a dissident during Frances war with Algeria.

Three Italian films are in the running for the festival's top prize - the coveted Golden Lion - including 'Il Giovane Favoloso' by Mario Martone, mafia saga 'Anime Nere' by Francesco Munzi and 'Hungry Hearts' by Saverio Costanzo. Several films will also be shown, apart from the competitors, including 'The Sound and The Fury' by Hollywood actor-director James Franco, an adaptation of the novel by American writer William Faulkner; 'She's Funny That Way' from Peter Bogdanovich; and The Humbling from Barry Levinson.

Danish director Lars Von Trier will present an extended director's cut of his 'Nymphomaniac Volume II', which follows up on the original presented last year at the Berlin Film Festival.

Meanwhile, a separate Venice Classics series will offer a number of restored classic films as well as industry-related documentaries such as Marco Spagnoli's homage to Sophia Loren 'Women of Myth' accompanied by a showing of Ettore Scola's restored 1977 film 'Una Giornata Particolare' (A Special Day) starring Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.