Venice Film Festival opens with Julia Roberts, George Clooney and global premieres. Photo / Getty Images
The Venice Film Festival kicks off this week, rolling out the red carpet for Julia Roberts and George Clooney in a flurry of worldwide premieres at the glitzy celebration on the sandy Lido.
A cavalcade of cinema A-listers will arrive by water taxi to Venice’s seaside resort for the festival beginning on Wednesday, from Jude Law to Emma Stone, drawing hundreds of fans hoping for a glimpse of their favourite stars.
Among the acclaimed directors at the festival’s 82nd edition are Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, Gus Van Sant and Park Chan-wook, who returns to the festival after 20 years.
Venice, a highlight of the international film circuit, serves up both big budget films with box-office potential – such as Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as an ageing wrestler – and smaller independent works.
Despite the glamorous backdrop, some of the films lined up which are more focused on current events are likely to provoke debate.
As the war in Ukraine goes on, Law portrays Russian President Vladimir Putin during his ascent to power in Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin.
And filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, is set in Gaza.
It tells the true story of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in January 2024 by Israeli forces alongside six family members while trying to flee Gaza City.
It uses the real audio recording of Hind pleading for help to emergency services.
Hollywood megastar Roberts will be making her Venice debut on Friday in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt about a sexual assault case at a prestigious American university. The film is playing out of competition.
After delighting Venice fans from the red carpet last year, Clooney returns to star in the Netflix-produced Jay Kelly from Noah Baumbach, playing a beloved actor facing an identity crisis. Adam Sandler takes a supporting role as his manager.
Several winners at Venice, such as Nomadland and Joker, have subsequently gone on to Oscar glory, making the Italian festival a key launching pad for cinema success.
Streaming titles from Netflix and Amazon have also increasingly chosen the event for their worldwide debuts.
Two-time Oscar winner and Sideways director Alexander Payne heads the jury this year, tasked with awarding the Golden Lion best film to one of 21 contenders in the main competition on September 6.
New offerings from directors Assayas, Guillermo del Toro, Yorgos Lanthimos and Kathryn Bigelow are vying for the top prize at the festival, which opens on Wednesday evening (Thursday NZT) with a love story from Venice regular Paolo Sorrentino.
Sorrentino, best known for La Grande Belleza (The Great Beauty), has teamed up again with longtime collaborator Toni Servillo for La Grazia, set in their native Italy.
Greece’s Lanthimos and Stone – who worked together on the Oscar-winning Poor Things – reunite again for sci-fi Bugonia about a high-powered executive kidnapped by people who think she is an alien.
Frankenstein is a big-budget interpretation of the cinema classic from Mexico’s del Toro, starring Oscar Isaac.
The latest from Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) is A House of Dynamite, a political thriller starring Idris Elba. Both films are to be streamed on Netflix.
Fellow American director Jarmusch makes his debut in the main Venice line-up with Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, which he has called “a funny and sad film” starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, and Jarmusch regular Tom Waits.
Included in the main competition is also the latest documentary from Italy’s Gianfranco Rosi, Sotto le Nuvole (Below the Clouds), a black-and-white ode to Naples.
Out-of-competition documentaries include Sofia Coppola’s profile of fashion designer Marc Jacobs; the latest from former Golden Lion winner Laura Poitras about veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh; and a profile of British singer Marianne Faithfull from filmmaking team Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth.
A total of 21 films are in the running for the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize, won last year by The Room Next Door by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
The most keenly awaited titles include:
- The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas)
An adaptation of a best-selling book of the same name about Putin’s rise to power, featuring Law as the Russian president.
- A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow)
The first film since 2017 by the Oscar-winning director of Zero Dark Thirty which sees White House officials grappling with a missile and nuclear weapons crisis.
- The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
Johnson is cast in what appears a tailor-made role as an ageing wrestler, with Emily Blunt as his wife.
- The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania)
This drama reconstructing the real-life killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli troops in Gaza is set to be one of the festival’s most political films.
- The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)
A musical film about a religious sect in the United States by the co-writer of The Brutalist, again working with her director husband Brady Corbet.
- Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
A new big-budget version of the cinema classic by the Mexican director, starring hard-working Isaac, who is featured in two major Venice films.
- Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
A comedy co-written by Baumbach and his wife Greta Gerwig, featuring an A-list cast led by Clooney, who plays an actor with an identity crisis.
- Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
The latest collaboration between the Greek director and Stone, who won an Oscar for her performance in their 2023 film Poor Things, which won Venice’s Golden Lion.
- No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
The South Korean auteur Park returns to Venice after two decades with a thriller about a vindictive manager who loses his job.
- The Stranger (Francois Ozon)
An ambitious new adaptation of French author Albert Camus’ masterful novella of the same name, shot in black-and-white.
- Nuhai (Shu Qi)
Taiwanese superstar Shu makes her directorial debut with a story about multiple generations of women.
- After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino)
Roberts makes her Venice debut for the premiere of this cancel culture-themed drama about a sexual assault case at a prestigious American university.
- In the Hand of Dante (Julian Schnabel)
Held up by a dispute between the director and his financial backers over its 150-minute length, this crime thriller stars Isaac, with cameos from veterans Al Pacino and John Malkovich.
- Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant)
The American director’s first movie since 2018 centres on a real-life hostage drama at a loan agency, with performances by Bill Skarsgard and Pacino.
Others to watch include big-budget French thriller Chien 51, which will close the festival, and Scarlet by Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda.
Among the documentaries, German director Werner Herzog’s latest film, Ghost Elephants, about a mythical herd of elephants in Angola, stands out.
Viewers will need patience - and a strong bladder - for Director’s Diary, a five-hour epic by dissident Russian director Alexander Sokurov based on his personal diary notes from the Soviet era.
Netflix has three films in competition - Frankenstein, A House of Dynamite and Jay Kelly - showcasing some of its best hopes of clinching its first Best Picture award at the Oscars next year.
The increasingly long run-times of films - averaging 2h15 to 2h30 at Venice, according to artistic director Alberto Barbera - caused him to grumble about the difficulty of fitting them all in the schedule.
- Agence France-Presse