An excerpt from a website I pulled up:

The International Venice Film Festival, held during 1-11th September, will be an interesting event to look forward to for all Final Fantasy VII fans. Square Enix will present a special preview edition of their upcoming sequel to their Playstation blockbuster hit. It will be featured in 'Venezia Digitale', which is a new category dedicated to digitally created feature-length movies.

"As we continually strive to create digital entertainment that pushes the boundaries of technology and art, we welcome the opportunity to become a part of the world cinema community through the Venice International Film Festival." -Tetsua Nomura, director of Advent Children. (EOFF)

Since Advent Children is still in development, it will not take part in the competition (so it won't be winning a Golden Lion Award, so don?t expect that). But the movie gets a special opportunity to appear on the festival, as the organisers were so impressed by the innovation and artistry of Square's newest movie project that they issued a special invitation, for the film to be part of the new category. It is a rare event that an unfinished movie will be put on display, and a specially edited version will be put together just for this occasion.

The film festival will be held for the 61st time this autumn. The Venice Film festival is one of the most famous and respected film festivals held on the ground of Europe, and this year won't be an exception; the festival will present Im Kwon-taek's latest, Haryu Insaeng, Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, Jonathan Glazer's experimental Birth, Claire Denis' L'Intrus, and Café Lumière. Todd Solondz will also be there with his latest effort: Palindromes, which is a film about an awkward 13-year-old girl. The festival comprises about 70 films and 19 digital pictures, divided into five main sections. It is quite difficult to get one?s movie for display there, because this year 1892 films were submitted for selection, and only 71 were chosen.

John Boorman will head the jury, whose members include Wolfgang Becker (director of Good-Bye Lenin), Spike Lee, Helen Mirren, Dusan Makavejev and Scarlett Johansson. The opening night film will be Steven Spielberg's The Terminal.

We are looking forward to the upcoming event. Finally we'll have the chance to see more than just short trailers of the same scenes we have already seen, because according to La Binnale's line-up, Advent Children has been booked for a 30-minute long presentation. However, it?s not known, if anyone besides the guests will ever see any of it.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children will be making its debut on the silver screen in Venice, but a theatretical release for the previously planned direct-to-DVD project may not be completely out of the question. According to 1up.com, Square Enix's President Yoichi Wada had told Impress Game Watch recently that Advent Children might also try to reach the potential viewers via digital downloads and cinemas. Perhaps the delay in development has given Square Enix time to explore for a wider variety of distribution methods; the movie was originally scheduled to be released this summer, but now the only official information we have on this issue is: Sometime this year.