It is a star-studded roster at this year’s Venice International Film Festival with the return of much-feted filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Park Chan-wook, as well as supreme acting talents like Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Emma Stone, Laura Dern, Ayo Edebiri, Jude Law, Jacob Elordi and more.
Ahead of the 82nd edition, due to run from August 27 to September 6, these are the films, spanning myriad genres, that we have our eyes on.
1. After the Hunt
Right after his Daniel Craig-led Queer which made waves last year, Luca Guadagnino returns to the Lido with his latest thriller that is packed with an enviable cast — Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloe Sevigny, and Julia Roberts, with the prolific actress surprisingly set to mark her maiden appearance on the Venice red carpet.
The seemingly simply but expectedly layered description of the film — which will premiere out of competition at Venice — reads: ‘A college professor (played by Roberts) is forced to grapple with her own secretive past after one of her colleagues is faced with a serious accusation.’
The trailer of After The Hunt is peak Guadagnino, impressing not only with its spine-chilling atmospherics but also its Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross-scored deep dive into the corridors of power of the cloistered community at an Ivy League institution which is on the brink of imploding.
2. Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating (and much awaited) Mary Shelley adaptation casts Oscar Isaac as the wildly ambitious scientist and Jacob Elordi as his terrifying creation, alongside period-drama regulars Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley and Charles Dance. Frankenstein, which will screen in the main competition section, is the three-time Academy Award winner’s first big-screen, live-action offering since 2021’s Nightmare Alley.
In 2016, del Toro, whose mastery over the monster/ creature genre remains unchallenged, had said: “Frankenstein, to me, is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever.” Something tells us he has.
3. The Testament of
Ann Lee
Brady Corbet had quite the year last year — not only scooping up the Best Director prize at Venice, but also powering Brutalist all the way to the Academy Awards, with three important wins. This time, Corbet returns to Venice as the co-writer of The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by his partner Mona Fastvold.
The film traces Ann Lee (played by Amanda Seyfried), the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, who was proclaimed as the female Christ by her followers, and depicts her establishment of a utopian society and the Shakers’ worship through song and dance. Thomasin McKenzie, Christopher Abbott, Tim Blake Nelson and Stacy Martin make up the rest of the cast of what promises to be an intriguing watch. The film premieres in the main competition, where it is up for a Golden Lion, the biggest award of the festival.
4. Father Mother Sister Brother
Jim Jarmusch’s first film in six years is a tragicomic familial triptych tracking a set of ambivalent parents and their adult children. The cast — Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling — is as good as it gets, with Father Mother Sister Brother playing out against three distinct backdrops, notably Paris, Dublin and the American northeast. Jarmusch’s predilection for the whimsy is sure to make its way to the film. “Very subtle film; it’s very quiet, funny and sad,” is how the filmmaker had described his latest — that will also vie for the Golden Lion at Venice — a few years ago.
5. Jay Kelly
George Clooney slips into the shoes of a suave movie star (not much of a stretch there!) who is in the middle of an identity crisis, with Jay Kelly — sounding more like a celebrity late-night show than a film — following the friendship between Jay Kelly (Clooney) and his manager (played by Adam Sandler) as they travel through Europe and reflect on their life choices, relationships and legacies.
Directed by Noah Baumbach and written by Baumbach and actor Emily Mortimer (who also stars in the film), Jay Kelly boasts a cast comprising
Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Billy Crudup, Jim Broadbent, Lenny Henry, Alba Rohrwacher, Patrick Wilson, Eve Hewson and actor-filmmaker Greta Gerwig.
6. Bugonia
The 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! is reimagined in his trademark no-holds-barred fashion by Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek filmmaker, known for his off-centre brand of cinema (The Lobster, Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness) marks his fifth collaboration with two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone in this film which is being described as “chilling, absurdist farce”.
Bugonia is a story about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a high-powered CEO, convinced that she is an alien hellbent on destroying Earth. Lanthimos is a previous Golden Lion winner for Poor Things. Will he nail it again?
7. The Smashing Machine
The Safdie brothers have gone solo for the moment and Benny Safdie is now ready with his biographical sports drama The Smashing Machine, which he has written, directed, co-produced and edited. The multi-starcast film has Dwayne Johnson as former wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, alongside his Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt as Kerr’s then-wife Dawn Staples.
Based on the 2002 documentary of the same name about Kerr, who won widespread acclaim but was also guilty of substance abuse, The Smashing Machine is being looked at as Johnson’s bid for an Oscar nomination. This has been corroborated by the former WWE star himself, who is attempting to push the envelope with this film. “I’m at a point in my career where I want to push myself in ways that I’ve not pushed myself in the past. I’m at a point in my career where I want to make films that matter, that explore a humanity and explore struggle and pain,” the man known as ‘The Rock’ has said in the recent past.
8. A House of Dynamite
Kathryn Bigelow, the Oscar-winning maker of films like The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit, returns with a prophetic look at our present-day geopolitical landscape. A House of Dynamite is a political thriller that has US officials scrambling at the last minute with the White House facing an impending missile attack. Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Greta Lee, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jonah Hauer-King, Renee Elise Goldsberry, and Kaitlyn Dever make up at the A-list cast.
9. No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director behind Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave, will be at Venice with his pacy, black comedy based on Donald E. Westlake’s satirical horror The Ax. The film stars Lee Byung-hun, Squid Game’s infamous Front Man, along with Son Ye-jin and Park Hee-soon. It focuses on a middle manager who is left reeling after losing the position he has held for decades. After a long and unfruitful job hunt, he figures that the only way to be employed again is to eliminate his competition — in typical Park Chan-wook style.
Westlake’s book has earlier been adapted into The Axe by Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras, but with the kind of scathing social commentary we have seen in winning Korean content like Parasite and Squid Game, No Other Choice may have more up its sleeve.
10. Marc by Sofia
The first-ever documentary from celebrated filmmaker Sofia Coppola focuses on her longtime friend, collaborator and fashion maven Marc Jacobs. Given the close nature of their almost 30-year-old relationship, we expect Marc by Sofia (given its deeply personal name, a nod to the Marc by Marc Jacobs line) to be an intimate portrait of the life and times of the prolific designer for whom Coppola has often been a muse over the years.
Which three films showing at Venice are on your watchlist?
Tell t2@abp.in