The Venice film festival will this year feature one of its starriest lineups to date, with the likes of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Cate Blanchett, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga all expected to descend on the Lido.
The 81st edition of the festival, which runs from 28 August to 7 September, is back with a bang after it was deprived of its usual pomp and glamour during last year’s Hollywood strikes.
Among the films competing for Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion is Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 Golden Lion-winning Joker. Joaquin Phoenix, who won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck, AKA Joker, in the original, returns in this musical sequel, with Lady Gaga playing his love interest and partner in crime Harley Quinn. The film co-stars Brendan Gleeson, Zazie Beetz and Catherine Keener.
Also in competition are Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s hotly anticipated Queer, an adaptation of the William S Burroughs novel starring Daniel Craig, Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman; Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Joe Alwyn; and Justin Kurzel’s The Order, which follows a group of bank-robbing white supremacists featuring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan.
They will compete with Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s biopic Maria, in which Angelina Jolie stars as famed opera diva Maria Callas. The film, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, also stars Kodi Smit-McPhee and Pierfrancesco Favino.
More starry films competing for the Golden Lion are The Room Next Door, the English-language feature debut from Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, which stars Tilda Swinton as a war reporter who seeks help from her novelist friend Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore; and Dutch director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, an erotic mystery thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who jeopardises her family and career when she begins an affair with her much younger intern. Babygirl co-stars Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, and Jean Reno.
Meanwhile, the festival’s out of competition section includes the previously announced opening film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Tim Burton’s long-anticipated sequel to his 1988 comedy-horror hit, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci.
Venice stalwarts Brad Pitt and George Clooney will return to the Lido with Wolfs, Jon Watts’ action drama about two lone wolf fixers assigned to the same job. Also screening out of competition is Broken Rage, the latest feature from legendary Japanese director Takeshi Kitano, and L’orto Americana by Italian director Pupi Avati, which will be closing the festival.
Among the documentaries screening out of competition are Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ music doc One to One: John & Yoko – which looks at the couple’s life upon their entry into a transformative 1970’s New York; Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, about the American indie band Pavement, and Asif Kapadia’s 2073, which shows how the world is rapidly plunging into a vortex of authoritarianism and climate catastrophe, and features Samantha Morton and Naomi Ackie. Additionally, Göran Hugo Olsson’s Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 chronicles how Swedish public broadcasters have covered the crisis in the Middle East over three decades.
The television series premiering at Venice include five-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ show Disclaimer, which is based on Renée Knight’s bestselling psychological thriller novel and stars Cate Blanchett as an acclaimed journalist whose career has been built on revealing others’ transgressions, but who is horrified to realise she’s a key character in novel exposing her own darkest secret. The series co-stars Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Lesley Manville. Also among the series is Joe Wright’s M. Son of the Century, the Danish dystopian series Families Like Ours, and the Latin American limited series Los Años Nuevos.
The festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera said the shows’ inclusion in the programme was part of a larger reflection on “a transformation” taking place around the length of “cinematic” works.
The Horizons Extra category includes Tim Fehlbaum’s 1972 Munich summer Olympics drama September 5 starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin.
This year’s competition jury is chaired by French actor Isabelle Huppert and includes directors James Gray and Andrew Haigh, among others.
