By Kristian Brunse

VENICE (Reuters) -Adapting a book for the screen is always “a betrayal”, French director François Ozon says, but in bringing Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” to the Venice Film Festival he hopes to generate fresh debate around a French classic.

Shot in black and white, the film follows Meursault, a detached young Frenchman living in colonial Algeria in the 1930s who kills an Arab on a beach and is put on trial, with a possible death sentence hanging over him.

Ozon, 57, is one of France’s most prolific filmmakers, known for works such as “Swimming Pool”, “8 Women” and “By the Grace of God”. He said his latest project was born after he revisited Camus’ novel, which he had first read in his teens.

“I realised how much the book still resonates with the present day,” he told

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