The fall festival season came into sharper focus on Thursday with the announcement of the lineup for the 73rd Venice Film Festival, opening with a new musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Running from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, the festival lands during a dense crush on the calendar, along with the Telluride Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, for unveiling international titles alongside Oscar hopefuls. Recent awards season successes "Spotlight," "Birdman" and "Gravity" all world-premiered at Venice.
Mel Gibson's World War II drama "Hacksaw Ridge," starring Andrew Garfield, is among the most high-profile titles from Thursday's announcement, playing out of competition ahead of its U.S. opening in November.
Spotlighting the delicate dance of high-profile festival programming, Antoine Fuqua's remake of "The Magnificent Seven," starring Denzel Washington, recently announced as the opening-night film in Toronto, will be the closing-night film for Venice. And the previously announced opening-night selection at Venice, Damien Chazelle's musical starring Stone and Gosling, "La La Land," will also play Toronto. (And probably Telluride too.)
The festival's main competition will feature an impressive group of American productions, including Ana Lily Amirpour's "The Bad Batch," starring Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey; Derek Cianfrance's "The Light Between Oceans," starring Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz; and Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals," starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams.
Among the other competition titles are films from Belgium, Argentina, Chile, Serbia, Germany, France, Italy, the Philippines and Mexico, including Emir Kusturica's "On The Milky Road," Francois Ozon's "Frantz" and Wim Wenders' "The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez."
The president of the jury at this year's festival will be filmmaker Sam Mendes. The festival is being dedicated to recently deceased directors Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Cimino. Work by each will be shown as part of the festival.
