2023 Venice: Ava DuVernay, David Fincher, Agnieszka Holland, Malgorzata Szumowska & Ryûsuke Hamaguchi Comp Surprises!

We have twenty-three competition entries and all the America films that were tipped to compete for the Golden Lion have indeed stuck to their plans of launching on the Lido. Of the big surprises of the line-up announcement we can add Ava DuVernay‘s Origin and especially Ryûsuke Hamaguchi‘s Evil Does Not Exist at the top of the list. That thinking could be extended to Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert‘s Woman Of, Nikolaj Arcel‘s The Promised Land and even Luc Besson‘s Dogman and especially for two films we thought were headed into 2024 with Stéphane Brizé‘s Hors-Saison and Agnieszka Holland‘s disturbing border drama (shot in secrecy) The Green Border. Here is the complete competition list – which our own Nicholas Bell will be reviewing LIVE on the Lido.

Comandante – Edoardo De Angelis (Italy) – Opening Film
The Promised Land – Nikolaj Arcel (Denmark, Germany, Sweden)
Dogman – Luc Besson (France)
Le Bête – Bertrand Bonello (France, Canada)
Hors-Saison – Stéphane Brizé (France)
Enea – Pietro Castellitto (Italy)
Maestro – Bradley Cooper (U.S.)
Priscilla – Sofia Coppola (U.S., Italy)
Finally Dawn – Saverio Costanzo (Italy)
Lubo – Giorgio Diritti (Italy)
Origin – Ava DuVernay (U.S.)
The Killer – David Fincher (U.S.)
Memory – Michel Franco (Mexico, U.S.)
Io Capitano – Matteo Garrone (Italy, Belgium)

Evil Does Not Exist – Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Japan)
The Green Border – Agnieszka Holland (Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium)
The Theory of Everything – Timm Kröger (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
Poor Things – Yorgos Lanthimos (U.K.)
El Conde – Pablo Larrain (Chile)
Ferrari – Michael Mann (U.S.)
Adagio – Stefano Sollima (Italy)
Woman Of – Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert (Poland, Sweden)
Holly – Fien Troch (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France)