75th Venice Film Festival welcomes the Coen Brothers, Lady Gaga, Luca Guadagnino, Jennifer Kent, Orson Welles
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After previously announced Damien Chazelle’s First Man as the opening night film the lineup for the 75th Venice Film Festival will be giving us the names and titles we expected to see – new films from Julian Schnabel (At Eternity’s Gate), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) and Jacques Audiard (The Sisters Brothers) and the tea was true about a single female in competition and which one, Jennifer Kent with The Nightingale. With 20 films announced its unlikely that will change and that incredible imbalance is even worse than Cannes, which had three women directors in competition. Toronto, which doesn’t have the same type of in competition or awards breakdown as Cannes or Venice (and which has considerably more films) came to the table with dozens of female-directed films, many of which were world premieres that could have easily been chosen by one of Europe’s oldest and most well-known fests.
The biggest takeaway from today’s announcement is that, like Toronto, Venice is thumbing the Cannes Film Festival and their fight with Netflix in a major way. No less than six titles from the streamer will show on the Lido including the previously predicted new Coen Brothers limited series The Ballad of Buster Scruggs that, surprise, is going to be run as a feature film and drops itself into the pool of this year’s Oscar contenders. Originally created as six separate anthology tales, they will now be merged into a 5+ hour feature. Also showing up from the Netflix will be Paul Greengrass’s 22 July (previously called Norway) about the 2011 terrorist attack in and around Oslo that killed 77 people and the now-completed final film from Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind. This film was the one that broke the camel’s back at Cannes and with France’s strict rules about theatrical presentation and Netflix’s three-year long wait to show films theatrically there, no compromise could be met so the streamer pulled all potential films from the festival. But, Cannes’ loss is Venice and TIFF’s gain.
It’s not just Netflix either. Its main US streaming competition, Amazon Studios, also has two films playing in competition, Luca Guadagnino’s grisly Suspiria remake and Mike Leigh’s take on the battle of Peterloo.
Other high-profile titles include the follow-up for László Nemes, Sunset. His debut film, Son of Saul, won the Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2016. Yorgos Lanthimos is bypassing Toronto and choosing to debut The Favourite at Venice instead (with still a chance at showing up at Telluride). Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut A Star Is Born will premiere here but out of competition.
This year’s Jury president is Guillermo del Toro, who won the Golden Lion here last year with The Shape of Water, on his way to Best Director and Best Picture wins at the Oscars. His jury will be comprised of a universal band of actors and directors alike: Nicole Garcia, Trine Dryholm, Sylvia Chang, Naomi Watts, Malgorzata Szumowska, Christoph Waltz, Taika Waititi, and Paulo Genovese.
Oscar and Volpi Cup winner Vanessa Redgrave will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
The 75th annual Venice Film Festival runs August 29 – September 8. Check out the full lineup below.
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL— IN COMPETITION
“First Man,” Damien Chazelle (U.S.)
“The Mountain,” Rick Alverson (U.S.)
“Doubles Vies,” Olivier Assayas (France)
“The Sisters Brothers,” Jacques Audiard (France, Belgium, Romania, Spain)
“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” Ethan and Joel Coen (U.S.)
“Vox Lux,” Brady Corbet (U.S.)
“Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón (Mexico)
“22 July,” Paul Greengrass (Norway, Iceland)
“Suspiria,” Luca Guadagnino (Italy)
“Work Ohne Autor,” Florian Henkel Von Donnersmark (Germany)
“The Nightingale,” Jennifer Kent (Australia)
“The Favourite,” Yorgos Lanthimos (U.S.)
“Peterloo,” Mike Leigh (U.K., U.S.)
“Capri-Revolution,” Mario Martone (Italy, France)
“What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?”, Roberto Minervini (Italy, U.S., France)
“Sunset,” László Nemes (Hungary, France)
“Freres Ennemis,” David Oelhoffen (France, Belgium)
“Neustro Tiempo,” Carlos Reygadas (Mexico, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden)
“At Eternity’s Gate,” Julian Schnabel (U.S., France)
“Killing,” Shinya Tsukamoto (Japan)
OUT OF COMPETITION
SPECIAL EVENT
“The Other Side Of The Wind,” Orson Welles (U.S.)
“They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead,” Morgan Neville (U.S.)
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“My Brilliant Friend,” Saverio Costanzo (Italy, Belgium)
“Il Diario Di Angela – Noi Due Cineasti,” Yervant Gianikian (Italy)
FICTION
“Una Storia Senza Nome,” Roberto Andò (Italy)
“Les Estivants,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (France, Italy)
“A Star Is Born,” Bradley Cooper (U.S.)
“Mi Obra Maestra,” Gaston Duprat (Argentina, Spain)
“A Tramway in Jerusalem,” Amos Gitai (Israel, France)
“Un Peuple et Son Roi,” Pierre Schoeller (France, Belgium)
“La Quietud,” Pablo Trapero (Argentina)
“Dragged Across Concrete,” S. Craig Zahler (U.S.)
“Shadow,” Zhang Yimou (China)
NON-FICTION
“Aquarela,” Victor Kossakovsky (U.K., Germany)
“El Pepe, Una Vida Suprema,” Emir Kusturica (Argentina, Uruguay, Serbia)
“Process,” Sergei Loznitsa (The Netherlands)
“Carmine Street Guitars,” Ron Mann (Canada)
“Isis, Tomorrow. The Lost Souls Of Mosul,” Francesca Mannocchi, Alessio Romenzi (Italy, Germany)
“American Dharma,” Errol Morris (U.S., U.K.)
“Introduzione All’Oscuro,” Gaston Solnicki (Argentina, Austria)
“1938 Diversi,” Giorgio Treves (Italy)
“Your Face,” Tsai Ming-Liang (Chinese Taipei)
“Monrovia, Indiana,” Frederick Wiseman (U.S.)
“Soni,” Ivan Ayr (India)
“The River,” Emir Baigazin (Kazakistan, Poland, Norway)
“La Noche de 12 Anos,” Alvaro Brechner (Spain, Argentina, France)
“Deslembro,” Flavia Castro (Brasil, France, Qatar)
“The Announcement,” Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Turkey, Bulgaria)
“Un Giorno All’Improvviso,” Ciro D’Emilio (Italy)
“Charlie Says,” Mary Harron (U.S.)
“Amanda,” Mikhael Hers (France)
“The Day I Lost My Shadow,” Soudade Kaadan (Syria, Lebanon, France, Qatar)
“L’Enkas,” Sarah Marx (France)
“The Man Who Surprised Everyone,” Evgeniy Tsiganov, Natalya Kudryashowa (Russia, Estonia, France)
“Through The Holes,” Garin Nugroho (Indonesia, Australia)
“As I Lay Dying,” Mostafa Sayyari (Iran)
“La Profezia Dell’armadillo,” Emanuele Scaringi (Italy)
“Stripped,” Yaron Shani (Israel, Germany)
“Jinpa,” Pema Tseden (China)
“Tel Aviv on Fire,” Same Zoabi (Luxembourg, France, Israel, Belgium)
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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