Venice Film Festival: Park Chan-wook, Yorgos Lanthimos, Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino & More Slated

The Venice Film Festival has cemented itself as the launchpad to the Oscar season. Last year’s competition highlights, The Brutalist and I’m Still Here, went on to pick Oscars, from a bevvy of nominations. This edition promises a galley of top stars descending on the Lido, everyone from Julia Roberts to Emma Stone to George Clooney to Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi. Interestingly, Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo drama After The Hunt, starring Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, will play out of competition on the studio, Amazon MGM’s insistence. Yorgos Lanthimous reunites with Stone for the fifth time in alien conspiracy drama Bugonia. Park Chan-wook returns to Venice competition two decades after his 2005 classic Lady Vengeance. Six of the 21 films in Competition are directed by women, similar to last year. Another distinguishing aspect of this edition is the upscaling of documentaries. The one to eye is Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel’s decade-in-the-making Nuestra Tierra, which examines the murder of indigenous activist Javier Chocobar.

Prominent adaptations feature in the mix, a standout being the eer-prolific Francois Ozon’s spin on Albert Camus’ classic The Stranger. Netflix has three films in competition (Kathryn Bigelow’s A House Of Dynamite, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein). Other streamers, with the exception of Mubi (repping four buzzy selections) , are mostly absent. Venice, which isn’t as politically frontal as Berlinale or Cannes, also seems to take on geopolitics with big strides this year. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, whose 2023 documentary Four Daughters was in Cannes competition and got a Oscar nod, has The Voice of Hind Rajab, circling the real-life story of a Palestinian girl killed when a vehicle carrying her family was shelled by Israeli forces in 2024. Jude Law essays Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin. Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia opens the festival. Other top titles to look out for include Son of Saul director László Nemes’ Orphan and Golden Bear winner Ildiko Enyedi’s century-spanning Silent Friend, starring Tony Leung and Lea Seydoux. Two-time Oscar winning filmmaker Alexander Payne presides over the jury.

India’s Songs of Forgotten Trees by Anuparna Roy is in the parallel Orizzonti competition, alongside 18 other titles.

Here’s the complete list of the official selections:

Main Competition

· The Wizard of the Kremlin - Olivier Assayas

· Jay Kelly - Noah Baumbach

· The Voice of Hind Rajab - Kaouther Ben Hania

· A House of Dynamite - Kathryn Bigelow

· The Sun Rises on Us All - Cai Shangjun

· Frankenstein - Guillermo del Toro

· Elisa - Leonardo Di Costanzo

· À Pied d’Oeuvre - Valérie Donzelli

· Silent Friend - Ildikó Enyedi

· The Testament of Ann Lee - Mona Fastvold

· Father Mother Sister Brother - Jim Jarmusch

· Bugonia - Yorgos Lanthimos

· Duse - Pietro Marcello

· Un Film Fatto Per Bene - Franco Maresco

· Orphan - László Nemes

· L’Étranger- François Ozon

· No Other Choice - Park Chan-wook

· Sotto le Nuvole - Gianfranco Rosi

· The Smashing Machine - Benny Safdie

· Nühai (Girl) - Shu Qi

Orizzonti

·       Mother - Teona Strugar Mitevska (opening film)

·       Divine Comedy - Ali Asgari

·       Hiedra - Ana Cristina Barragán

·       Il rapimento di Arabella - Carolina Cavalli

·       Estrany riu - Jaume Claret Muxart

·       Lost Land - Akio Fujimoto

·       Grand ciel - Akihiro Hata

·       Rose of Nevada - Mark Jenkin

·       Late Fame - Kent Jones

·       Milk Teeth - Mihai Mincan

·       Pin de fartie - Alejo Moguillansky

·       Father - Tereza Nvotová

·       En el camino - David Pablos

·       Songs of Forgotten Trees - Anuparna Roy

·       Un anno di scuola - Laura Samani

·       The Souffleur - Gastón Solnicki

·       Barrio triste - Stillz

·       Human Resource - Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

·       Funeral Casino Blues - Roderick Warich