The Venice Film Festival opened on Wednesday, with Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone among the stars walking the red carpet. France is strongly represented this year with three films in the main competition, including The Wizard of the Kremlin by Olivier Assayas, starring Jude Law as a young Vladimir Putin.
The 82nd edition of the festival – known as the "La Mostra" – opens Wednesday evening with La Grazia – a love story from Venice regular Paolo Sorrentino, starring longtime collaborator Toni Servillo and set in their native Italy.
Two-time Oscar winner and Sideways American director Alexander Payne takes over from France's Isabelle Huppert to head this year's jury, tasked with awarding the Golden Lion best film to one of the 21 main competition contenders on 6 September.
He is joined by French director Stéphane Brizé, Italian director Maura Delpero, Romanian director and producer Cristian Mungiu, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, Brazilian actress and screenwriter Fernanda Torres, and Chinese actress Zhao Tao.
The 2024 Golden Lion went to Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
Frenchies on the frontline
French director Olivier Assayas has chosen a prestigious international casting for his film The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le Mage du Kremlin), an adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli's best-selling novel.
It chronicles Russian President Vladimir Putin's rise to power in the 1990s from the perspective of one of his closest advisors. Jude Law plays the Kremlin strongman on screen beside Paul Dano as the spin-doctor Vadim Baranov accompanied by Alicia Vikander.
François Ozon has taken on the task of adapting Albert Camus' classic novel L'Etranger (The Stranger), to the screen in black and white, with Benjamin Voisin as the young Meursault beside Rebecca Marder, Swann Arlaud, Pierre Lottin and Denis Lavant.
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Valérie Donzelli's new film A pied d'oeuvre (On the job) is also in competition, starring Bastien Bouillon. Based on a novel by Franck Courtès, Donzelli's seventh feature follows a successful photographer who abandons everything to devote himself to writing.
The festival's closing film is dystopian thriller Chien 51 (Dog 51) by Cédric Jimenez with Gilles Lellouche and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Set in a futuristic Paris divided by social class and dominated by artificial intelligence, it also stars Louis Garrel, Romain Duris, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
French director Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2021 for Titane, will chair the parallel Orizzonti section, a competitive section geared towards young talent and independent productions.
Gaza on and off screen
International film festivals have become places of protest and drawing attention to causes and Venice is no exception.
The Voice of Hind Rajab by two-time Oscar nominee French-Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania, set in Gaza, is likely to grab a few headlines due to its link to current affairs.
It revisits the death, in early 2024 in Gaza, of a Palestinian girl who "was trying to flee with her family during an Israeli attack" and features the original recordings of emergency calls.
Before the start of the festival, a group of Italian film professionals Venice4Palestine, called on organisers not to remain silent on the Gaza war, and a protest on the Lido is scheduled for Saturday.
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"In Venice, all the spotlight will be on the world of cinema, and we all have a duty to make known the stories and voices of those who are being massacred, even with the complicit indifference of the West," read an open letter signed by directors and actors including Matteo Garrone and Alice Rohrwacher.
The group called for the festival to disinvite actors Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot – appearing in Julian Schnabel's In the Hand of Dante – who it said "ideologically and materially" support Israel's actions.
The festival's artistic director, Alberto Barbera, told French news agency AFP that "the festival is obviously not closed in a bubble" and directors today are "reflecting on the major problems that afflict us daily on a global level, from wars to the return of nuclear anxiety, obviously the occupation of Gaza and Palestine but also the many dictatorships resurging throughout the world."
Hollywood Streaming
Venice, a highlight of the international film circuit, will serve up a healthy dose of big budget films – such as Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as an ageing wrestler.
Greece's Yorgos Lanthimos teams up with Emma Stone (Poor Things) for sci-fi Bugonia about a high-powered executive kidnapped by people who think she is an alien.
Jim Jarmusch makes his debut in the main Venice lineup with Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, which he has called "a funny and sad film" starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Tom Waits.
Hollywood megastar Julia Roberts will make her Venice debut in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, about a sexual assault case at a prestigious American university. The film is playing out of competition.
Often considered a launching pad for the Oscars, the Mostra offers a large space for Hollywood films and streaming platforms, unlike its Cannes competitor, which champions theatrical releases.
Three Netflix films are competing for the Golden Lion: Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi; Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite, a White House thriller with Idris Elba; and Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney as an actor in crisis facing an identity crisis, flanked by Laura Dern and Adam Sandler.
Special Awards
During the opening ceremony, German director Werner Herzog, 82, will receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from director Francis Ford Coppola.
Herzog's latest documentary, Ghost Elephants about a lost herd in Angola, debuts at the festival.
The festival also plans to pay tribute midway through to American actress Kim Novak, 92, the star of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, as well as to American director Gus Van Sant, who will present an out-of-competition premiere of his latest film, Dead Man's Wire.
(with newswires)
