AFP-BNS
The Venice Film Festival begins on Wednesday, featuring numerous world premieres and appearances by major stars including Julia Roberts and George Clooney.
Many of the world’s most famous movie stars – from Jude Law to Emma Stone – are expected to arrive by water taxi for the opening ceremony, drawing hundreds of fans eager to catch a glimpse of their glamour.
Among the acclaimed directors participating in the 82nd edition of the festival are Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, Gus Van Sant, and Park Chan-wook, who returns to Venice after a 20-year absence.
The festival, one of the most prominent on the international film calendar, will showcase both big-budget productions, such as Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne Johnson as an aging wrestler, and smaller independent films.
Despite the lavish backdrop, debate over the war in Gaza has already reached Venice, with a protest planned for Saturday on the Lido island.
The Italian film collective “Venice4Palestine” on Sunday called on the festival to take a “clear stance” and support artists opposing Israel’s tactics in the war, which was triggered by a deadly Hamas attack two years ago.
“In Venice, all eyes will be on the world of cinema, and we all have a duty to amplify stories and voices of those being killed, even amid the West’s complicit indifference,” read an open letter signed by directors and actors including Matteo Garrone and Alice Rohrwacher.
The group urged the festival to withdraw invitations to actors Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot, who appear in Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante and are said to “ideologically and materially” support Israel’s actions.
In response, the festival stated it has always been “a place for open discussion” and highlighted the inclusion in its program of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s new film The Voice of Hind Rajab, set in Gaza.
The film reconstructs the death of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, killed last year by Israeli forces.
In January 2024, she and her family were fleeing an Israeli offensive in Gaza City when their car was attacked. In an incident that drew international outrage, recordings captured her desperate calls to the Red Crescent for help as the sole survivor trapped in the destroyed vehicle. She and two Red Crescent workers sent to rescue her were later found dead.
Another film expected to spark debate amid the ongoing war in Ukraine is French director Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, an adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s bestselling novel about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, starring Jude Law as the Russian leader.
Oscar hopes
Hollywood megastar Julia Roberts will make her Venice debut on Friday with Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, a drama about sexual assault at a prestigious American university. The film will not compete for the Golden Lion.
George Clooney, who delighted fans on the red carpet last year, returns in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, produced by Netflix. He plays a beloved actor facing an identity crisis, with Adam Sandler cast as his manager.
Several films that premiered in Venice – including Nomadland and Joker – later triumphed at the Oscars, cementing the Italian festival’s reputation as a key launchpad for awards season. Streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon are increasingly choosing Venice for their world premieres.
Two-time Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne (Sideways) will chair this year’s jury, which will award the Golden Lion for best film on September 6. Twenty-one films in the main competition will vie for the prize.
Aliens and Frankenstein
Among those competing for the Golden Lion are films by Assayas, Guillermo del Toro, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Bigelow. The festival will open Wednesday evening with a love story by regular Venice guest Paolo Sorrentino.
Sorrentino, best known for The Great Beauty, reunites with longtime collaborator Toni Servillo in La Grazia, set in their native Italy.
Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, who worked together on the Oscar-winning Poor Things, return with the sci-fi film Bugonia, about a powerful leader kidnapped by people who believe she is an alien.
Del Toro will present his lavish new take on Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac, while Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, a political thriller with Idris Elba, will also premiere.
Jim Jarmusch will debut in the main competition with Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, described as both “funny and sad.” The cast includes Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, and Jarmusch regular Tom Waits.
Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi will also compete with Sotto le Nuvole, a black-and-white ode to Naples.
The out-of-competition lineup features Sofia Coppola’s portrait of fashion designer Marc Jacobs, Golden Lion winner Laura Poitras’s film on U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, and Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth’s work on late British singer Marianne Faithfull.