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Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Clifton Collins Jr., Nina Dobrev, Ilfenesh Hadera, Tim Blake Nelson, Oliver Trevena | Written by Hanna Weg, Pete Travis | Directed by Renny Harlin

We’ve had The Gardener, The Baker, The Painter, and now The Bricklayer joins the list of men of violence who’ve taken up peaceful professions only to find out that in some jobs you can never truly leave your past behind.

Steve Vail was one of the C.I.A. ‘s most dependable agents, even if his lack of respect for procedure made him less than popular with his superiors. Disillusioned, he now finds solace in masonry, “When I hold a brick in my hand I know exactly what it is and what it will do every single time. It’s form is its function”

Radek was a C.I.A. asset working under Vail until he was compromised and his family murdered. He went rogue...

If you pitched the plot of Brothers, the Czech Republic’s official Oscar submission for best international film, as a screenplay, you’d get back studio notes calling it “unbelievable” and “over-the-top.”

Two brothers — Josef and Radek Mašín, sons of a legendary anti-Nazi resistance fighter Josef Mašín — take up arms against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, carrying out targeting killings and acts of sabotage. When they get pinned in by the authorities, they shoot their way out and take off on a death-defying escape to West Berlin, crossing Czechoslovakia and East Germany, while pursued by Red Army soldiers and 20,000 East German police in the biggest manhunt in Cold War history. But the story, told by director Tomáš Mašín in Brothers is all true.

“It’s the utmost poignant and inspiring story,” says Mašín, who is a distant relative to the Mašín brothers, in a THR Presents panel powered by Vision Media.

Italian hotshot Pietro Castellitto is in competition in Venice with his second feature “Enea,” in which he also stars as the titular character, a young Roman sushi restaurant owner and cocaine dealer whose best friend Valentino just got his license as an airplane pilot. There is a lot going on in this fresh and frenzied film lensed by ace cinematographer Radek Ladczuk (“The Babadook”).

“Enea” is produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s the Apartment, which is a Fremantle company, and Luca Guadagnino’s Frenesy. Vision Distribution is handling world sales.

Castellitto spoke to Variety about what drew him to make what he calls a gangster movie without the gangster bits.

This seems like a very personal film. Is it?

I would say it’s basically a movie about the desire to feel alive. What moves Enea is the need to feel life pulsing within him. There is this tragic paradox that...