2016 Venice Film Festival Lineup: Amy Adams x 2, ‘Jackie,’ Terrence Malick
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The lineup for the 73rd Venice Film Festival is giving a bit of deja vú of this week’s TIFF lineup with La La Land, Arrival and Nocturnal Animals all hitting the Lido before jumping over to Toronto. That’s another double for Amy Adams, whose Arrival hasn’t even shown us a single production still, and Nocturnal Animals. Director Tom Ford’s sophomore effort follows his first film, A Single Man, by debuting at Venice.
Those three films are high in the awards conversation this year and recent years have seen Venice as a real jumping off point for heavy Oscar players – Spotlight, Birdman and Gravity all got their start here.
An interesting (if a bit expected) surprise is Pablo Larraín’s Jackie starring Oscar-winner Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy. This is Larraín’s second festival effort this year; his Neruda was at Cannes. This could push Portman into the already very packed Best Actress race if Jackie is released this year. Currently it is without a US distributor but the fall festivals are where awards plays can be bought and made. Terrence Malick’s IMAX doc Voyage of Time (a likely Documentary Feature Oscar contender) is here as well as Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender and newly minted Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander.
Exciting new director Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) is set for an In Competition placement for her film The Bad Batch starring Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves and playing Out of Competition will be Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven starring Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge starring Andrew Garfield and Philippe Falardeau’s The Bleeder starring Liev Schreiber.
As with Toronto, we’re still missing some major players in this year’s Oscar race. Silence, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Moonlight are nowhere to be found. While Silence will probably skip the festival route and Billy Lynn looking likely to debut at AFI, that still leaves Moonlight from A24 without much of a runway left. It will need to hit Telluride to build itself up as an awards player. The studio also has American Honey (which will hit TIFF) and 20th Century Women starring Annette Bening, which was just announced as the Centerpiece of the New York Film Festival.
55 films were selected from 1,468 feature films this year. Sam Mendes will preside over a truly eclectic jury: Laurie Anderson, Gemma Arterton, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Joshua Oppenheimer, Lorenzo Vigas and Zhao Wei.
The festival runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10.
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL — IN COMPETITION
“The Bad Batch,” Ana Lily Amirpour (U.S.)
“Une Vie,” Stephan Brizé (France, Belgium)
“La La Land,” Damien Chazelle (U.S.)
“The Light Between Oceans,” Derek Cianfrance (U.S., Australia, New Zealand)
“El ciudadano ilustre,” Mariano Cohn, Gaston Duprat (Argentina, Spain)
“Spira Mirabilis,” Massimo D’Anolfi, Martina Parenti (Italy, Switzerland)
“The Woman Who Left,” Lav Diaz (Philippines)
“La region salvaje,” Amat Escalante (Mexico)
“Nocturnal Animals,” Tom Ford (U.S.)
“Piuma,” Roan Johnson (Italy)
“Paradise,” Andrei Konchalovsky (Russia, Germany)
“Brimstone,” Martin Koolhoven (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, U.K. Sweden)
“On the Milky Road,” Emir Kusturica (Serbia, U.K., U.S.)
“Jackie,” Pablo Larrain (U.S., Chile)
“Voyage of Time,” Terrence Malick (U.S., Germany)
“El Cristo ciego,” Christopher Murray (Chile, France)
“Frantz,” Francois Ozon (France)
“Questi Giorni,” Giuseppe Piccioni (Italy)
“Arrival,” Denis Villenueve (U.S.)
“The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez,” Wim Wenders (France, Germany)
OUT OF COMPETITION
Special Event
“The Young Pope” (episodes 1, 2), Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, France, Spain, U.S.)
FICTION
“The Bleeder,” Philippe Falardeau (U.S., Canada)
“The Magnificent Seven,” Antoine Fuqua (U.S.)
“Hacksaw Ridge,” Mel Gibson (U.S.)
“The Journey,” Nick Hamm (U.K.)
“A jamais,” Benoit Jacquot (France, Portugal)
“Gantz:O,” Yasushi Kawamura (Japan)
“The Age of Shadows,” Kim Jee woon (South Korea)
“Monte,” Amir Naderi (Italy, U.S., France)
“Tommaso,” Kim Rossi Stewart (Italy)
NON-FICTION
“Our War,” Bruno Chiaravallotti, Claudio Jampaglia, Benedetta Argentieri (Italy, U.S.)
“I Called Him Morgan,” Kasper Collin (Sweden, U.S.)
“One More Time with Feeling,” Andrew Dominik (U.K.)
“Austerlitz,” Sergei Loznitsa (Germany)
“Assalto al cielo,” Francesco Munzi (Italy)
“Safari,” Ulrich Seidl (Austria, Denmark)
“American Anarchist,” Charlie Siskel (U.S.)
HORIZONS
“Tarde para la ira,” Raul Arevalo (Spain)
“King of the Belgians,” Peter Brosens, Jessica Woolworth (Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria)
“Through the Wall,” Rama Burshtein (Israel)
“Liberami,” Federica Di Giacomo (Italy, France)
“Big Big World,” Reha Erdem (Turkey)
“Gukuroku,” Ishikawa Kei (Japan)
“Maudit Poutine,” Karl Lemieux, (Canada)
“Sao Jorge,” Marco Martins (Portugal, France)
“Dawson City: Frozen Time,” Bill Morrison (U.S., France)
“Reparer les vivants,” Katell Quillevere (France, Belgium)
“White Sun,” Deepak Rauniyar (Nepal, U.S., Qatar, Netherlands)
“Malaria,” Parviz Shahbazi (Iran)
“Kekszakallu,” Gaston Solnicky (Argentina)
“Home,” Fien Troch (Belgium)
“Die Einsiedler,” Fien Troch (Germany, Austria)
“Il più grande sogno,” (Italy)
“Boys in the Trees,” Nicholas Verso (Australia)
“Bitter Money,” Wang Bing (China)
Special Out-Of-Competition Screening
“Dark Night,” Tim Sutton (U.S.)
“Planetarium,” Rebecca Zlotowski (France, Belgium)
CINEMA IN THE GARDEN
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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