2024 Venice Film Festival Lineup: Star-Studded ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ ‘Maria,’ ‘Queer,’ ‘Babygirl’ Headed to the Lido

The 81st Venice Film Festival has revealed its lineup for this year’s edition and boasts the most star-studded, Oscar-winning Hollywood royalty in years set to converge at the Lido’s Palazzo del Cinema between August 28 – September 7.

Lady Gaga, Joaquin Phoenix, Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Monica Bellucci, Michael Keaton and Jenna Ortega are among just some of the actors with films set to have their world premieres at the kickoff of the fall festival season.

As expected, Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Academy Award winners Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is set for a competition slot. The first film won Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion, then went on to earn 11 Oscar nominations (the most of 2019) and wins for Phoenix in Best Actor and Original Score for Hildur Guðnadóttir. This time around it’s a full-fledged musical with Lady Gaga co-starring as fellow mental asylum patient Lee, aka Harley Quinn, previously played by Margot Robbie in films like Suicide Squad (2016), Birds of Prey (2020), and The Suicide Squad (2021). Warner Bros. also dropped a new, full trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux with the announcement. Warner Bros. will release the film in the U.S. on October 4.

A year after dual Hollywood strikes yanked Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers from a Venice bow (the film was released this Spring to huge success), the director returns with his second release of 2024, the adaptation of Queer, William S. Burroughs’ seminal counterculture novel about an outcast American expatriate who lives in Mexico and is fighting an addiction to heroin. The film stars Daniel Craig, now out of his James Bond era, playing the author’s alter ego. Outer Banks‘ Drew Starkey co-stars as a younger man with whom Craig becomes infatuated, alongside Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread), Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City), singer Omar Apollo, and director David Lowery (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story). The film is currently without U.S. distribution.

Pablo Larraín returns to the Lido with the third in his tragic iconic women trilogy, Maria, starring Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie. Following the success of Jackie (starring Natalie Portman) and Spencer (with Kristen Stewart), Maria follows world renowned opera singer Maria Callas during her final days in 1970s Paris and co-stars Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The film is currently without U.S. distribution.

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature film, The Room Next Door, stars Academy Award winners Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and follows up 2021’s Parallel Mothers, which earned Penélope Cruz the Volpi Cup for Best Actress and a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Actor turned director Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin) will also be back, this time with The Brutalist, which details 30 years in the life of László Tóth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust, played by Adrien Brody. The film also stars Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, and Guy Pearce. This is Corbet’s third film and third appearance at Venice, which previously saw his The Childhood of a Leader earn best first film in 2015, and Vox Lux, with Natalie Portman and Jude Law, that debuted on the Lido in 2018.

Brazilian director Walter Salles is back with his first film in over a decade with I’m Still Here, which reunites him with his Oscar-nominated Central Station star Fernanda Montenegro. The film follows the true story of Eunice Paiva, a mother of five who is forced into activism after her husband is captured by the military regime in Brazil in the 1960s.

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies director Halina Reijn will follow up with the A24 erotic thriller Babygirl with Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas and Harris Dickinson while Justin Kurzel’s The Order, starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult details a white supremacist organization from the 1980s.

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the Venice opener, previously announced and out of competition, with Michael Keaton returning as the foul-mouthed, crotch-grabbing undead and joined by the original 1988 film’s co-stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. New are Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe. The film will premiere on August 28 just days ahead of its international release on September 4 and U.S. release on September 6 from Warner Bros.

The Jon Watts-directed action comedy Wolfs, starring Academy Award winners George Clooney and Brad Pitt as post-crime fixers, will have an out of competition slot before Sony Pictures releases the film stateside on September 20.

Chaired by American director and screenwriter Debra Granik, the Orizzonti International Jury, which will award the best first films, will also be composed of Iranian screenwriter, director and producer Ali Asgari; Syrian director and screenwriter Soudade Kaadan; Greek director, screenwriter and producer Christos Nikou; Swedish actress and director Tuva Novotny; Hungarian director Gábor Reisz; Italian screenwriter and director Valia Santella.

French actress Isabelle Huppert (Elle, The Pianist, La cérémonie ) will preside over the international jury of the competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, which will award the Golden Lion for best film and other official prizes. Huppert is the recipient of two Volpi Cups at the Venice Film Festival for A Woman’s Affair (1988) and La cérémonie (1995). The International Jury of the Venezia 81 Competition will also include American director and screenwriter James Gray; British director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh; Polish director, screenwriter and producer Agnieszka Holland; Brazilian director and screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho; Mauritanian director, screenwriter and producer Abderrahmane Sissako; Italian director and screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore; German director and screenwriter Julia von Heinz; and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

See the full lineup below.

COMPETITION

The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar (Spain)

Campo di Battaglia, Gianni Amelio (Italy) 

Leurs Enfants Après Eux, Ludovic Bouckherma, Zoran Boukherma (France)  

The Brutalist, Brady Corbet (U.K.) 

The Quiet Son, Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin (France) 

Vermiglio, Maura Delpero (Italy, France, Belgium) 

Sicilian Letters, Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza (Italy, France) 

Queer, Luca Guadagnino (Italy, U.S.) 

Love, Dag Johan Haugerud (Norway) 

April, Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia, France, Italy) 

The Order, Justin Kurzel (Canada) 

Maria, Pablo Larrain (Italy, Germany) 

Trois Amies, Emmanuel Mouret (France) 

Kill the Jockey, Luis Ortega (Argentina, Spain)

Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips (U.S.) 

Babygirl, Halina Reijn (U.S.) 

I’m Still Here, Walter Salles (Brazil, France) 

Diva Futura, Giulia Louise Steigerwalt (Italy) 

Harvest, Athina Rachel Tsangari (U.K., Germany, Greece, France, U.S.) 

Youth – Homecoming, Wang Bing (France, Luxembourg, Netherlands) 

Stranger Eyes, Yeo Siew Hua (Singapore, Taipei, France, U.S.) 

OUT OF COMPETITION — FICTION

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton (U.S., U.K.) – Opening Film

L’Orto Americano, Pupi Avati (Italy) — Closing Film  

Il Tempo Che Ci Vuole, Francesca Comencini (Italy, France) 

Phantosmia, Lav Diaz (Philippines) 

Maldoror, Fabrice Du Welz (Belgium, France) 

Broken Rage, Takeshi Kitano (Japan) 

Baby Invasion, Harmony Korine (U.S.) 

Cloud, Kurosawa Kiyoshi (Japan) 

Finalement, Claude Lelouch (France)

Wolfs, Jon Watts (U.S.)  

Se Posso Permettermi Capitolo II, Marco Bellocchio (Italy) 

Allégorie Citadine, Alice Rohrwacher, JR (France) 

OUT OF COMPETITION – SERIES

Disclaimer, Alfonso Cuaron (U.K., U.S.) 

The New Years, Rodrigo Sorogoyen Del Amo, Sandra Romero, David Martín De Los Santos (Spain) 

Families Like Ours, Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark, France, Sweden, Czech Republic, Norway, Germany)

M: Son of the Century, Joe Wright (Italy, France)  

OUT OF COMPETITION – NON-FICTION

Apocalypse in the Tropics, Petra Costa (Brazil) 

Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari, Massimo D’Anolfi, Martina Parenti (Italy, Switzerland) 

Why War, Amos Gitai (Israel, France) 

2073, Asif Kapadia (U.K.) 

One to One: John & Yoko, Kevin Macdonald, Sam Rice Edwards (U.K.) 

Separated, Errol Morris (U.S., Mexico) 

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, Göran Hugo Olsson (Sweden, Finland, Denmark) 

Russians at War, Anastasia Trofimova (France, Canada) 

Twst/Things We Said Today,”Andrei Ujica (France, Romania) 

Songs of Slow Burning Earth, Olha Zhurba (Ukraine, Denmark, Sweden) 

Riefenstahl, Andres Veiel (Germany) 

OUT OF COMPETITION — SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Leopardi. Il Poeta Dell’Infinito (Parts 1 and 2), Sergio Rubini (Italy) 

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Peter Weir (U.S.) 

Beauty Is Not a Sin, Nicolas Winding Refn (Italy, Denmark) 

HORIZONS

Nonostante, Valerio Mastandrea (Italy) – Opening Film

Quiet Life, Alexandros Avranas (France, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Estonia, Finland  

Mon Inséparable, Anne-Sophie Bailly (France) 

Aïcha, Mehdi Barsaoui (Tunisia, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) 

Happy Holidays, Scandar Copti (Germany, Italy, Qatar) 

Familia, Francesco Costabile (Italy) 

One of Those Days When Hemme Dies, Murat Firatoglu (Turkey)

Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland (U.S.) 

Marco, Jon Garraño, Aitor Arregi (Spain) 

Carissa, Jason Jacobs, Devon Delmar (South Africa) 

Wishing on a Star, Péter Kerekes – Documentary – (Italy, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic) 

Mistress Dispeller, – Documentary – Elizabeth Lo (China) 

The New Year That Never Came, Bogdan Muresanu (Romania, Serbia) 

Pooja, Sir, Deepak Rauniyar (Nepal, U.S., Norway)

Of Dogs and Men, Dani Rosenberg (Israel, Italy) 

Pavements, Alex Ross Perry (U.S.)  

Happyend, Neo Sora (Japan, U.S.) 

L’Attachement, Carine Tardieu (France, Belgium)

Diciannove, Giovanni Tortorici (Italy, U.K.)  

HORIZONS EXTRA 

September 5, Tim Fehlbaum (Germany) 

Vittoria, Alessandro Cassignoli, Casey Kauffman (Italy) 

Le Mohican, Frédéric Farrucci (France) 

Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo, Khaled Mansour (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) 

La Storia Del Frank e Della Nina, Paola Randi (Italy, Switzerland) 

The Witness, Nader Saeivar (Germany, Austria) 

After Party, Vojtech Strakaty (Czech Republic) 

Edge of Night, Türker Süer (Germany, Turkey) 

King Ivory, John Swab (U.S.)