THE Venice Film Festival’s prestige has been sinking in recent years, with a Golden Lion award that doesn’t roar nowadays so much as squeak. That’s according to the festival’s new director, Moritz de Hadeln, as he prepared for yesterday’s gala opening. De Hadeln said poor award choices and haphazard organization had damaged the world’s oldest film festival. “American distributors have told me recently that they consider that the Lion of Venice doesn’t have the commercial value it should have because in the last years it’s been given erratically,” he said. The 59th Venice Film Festival includes more than 75 feature films, from Hollywood to art-house, as well as many shorts and retrospectives. It opened with Frida, the long-awaited biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, starring Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas. The jury for the main Venice 59 prize is led by Chinese actress Gong Li. (SD-Agencies)