HIGH STAKES

♦ It’s 10am. The patio at the Hungaria Hotel on the Lido is buzzing with guests, staff and film-industry types attending this year’s Venice Film Festival. In a quiet corner sits Paul Schrader, the famed writer of Taxi Driver and director of such celebrated films as Blue Collar, Light Sleeper and Affliction. His last film, 2017’s priest-led drama First Reformed, earned the 75-year-old the first (very overdue) Oscar nomination of his career for Best Original Screenplay.

Now he’s back with The Card Counter, a brooding gambling drama with a darkly political undertow. “I was looking at professional gamblers on television, thinking it’s such an interesting way to spend your time,” he recalls. “Because all you’re really doing is running numbers. Card counting if you’re playing blackjack. Odds, if you’re playing poker, and you’re just waiting... waiting for that hand that occurs two, three times a day where two players think they’ll win and both go all in.”

Schrader’s scripts are often driven by Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle, he too is mentally scarred by wartime conflict.