Next week we will know the line ups for the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, as well as the 41st International Critics’ Week picks and 23rd Giornate degli Autori selections. Typically landing in the 21-to-23-film range, the Golden Lion competition lineup usually reserves four or five slots for Italian productions, leaving roughly sixteen places for the rest of the international field. Once the inevitable studio-backed red-carpet premieres are accounted for, the competition for the remaining slots becomes especially fierce, with limited opportunities for other national cinemas to break through and command attention. Tomorrow TIFF will offer a look into their Gala and Special Presentations selections which will include (and exclude) some of our guesses below. And if we are semi-correct in our guesses, we can predict that the main subject at the opening press conference with head jury person actress-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal will be the lack of female representation in the line-up. Arrows will be pointed in the direction of Artistic Director Alberto Barbera as on paper, this is shaping up to be a notably weak year for female filmmakers in Competition — we need to look at the Orrizonti section, International Critics’ Week and Giornate degli Autori for new oeuvres by female auteurs. Here are some educated guesses to all sections on the Lido.
In Competition:
Normally programming two to three French films, we should find Stéphane Brizé again. Having premiered A Woman’s Life (2016), Another World (2021) and the delightful Out of Season (2023), A Good Little Soldier stars Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon in a tale that takes place in the workspace.
David and Nathan Zellner’s Alpha Gang will have its international premiere at TIFF, so the Lido will have the alien comedy featuring Cate Blanchett, Chris Pine, Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Lily-Rose Depp, Adria Arjona, Doona Bae, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Riley Keough.
A Place to Heal (aka 15/18) by Cedric Kahn was apparently locked for comp during Cannes – this features Zoé Monpart, Malou Khebizi and Kenji Peyran in a post psychiatric ward moment where friendships truly do count.
He hasn’t been to the Lido since 2010’s 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike‘s NEON-backed Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo is the third installment in the series with a mixed brew of Shun Oguri, Lily James, and Liv Morgan.
Searchlight could attempt a triple threat of Telluride and TIFF with Tony Gilroy‘s tense music based drama Behemoth! which stars Pedro Pascal, Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, and Will Arnett.
Bypassing a Cannes Premiere, Werner Herzog‘s Bucking Fastard stars Kate Mara and Rooney Mara as twin sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who are in search of an imaginary land where true love is possible, start digging a tunnel through a mountain range.
His sophomore film premiered at Venice in 2022, so after The Son we find Florian Zeller‘s Bunker (a recent SPC pick-up) with Florian Zeller directing Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger is the tale of an architect’s marriage is tested after he accepts a project to build a bunker for a billionaire.
Casey Affleck quietly shot his third feature film titled Company – a Western that follows a love triangle between a husband and wife and the mysterious grifter.
He was on the Lido in the Orizzonti section with 2022’s Princess and should graduate to prime time with Da Tenere Bene In Mente. Roberto De Paolis landed Valeria Golino, Alessandro Borghi (who could have an epic fest with several titles) and Pietro Castellitto.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky‘s DAU films are still being released, the biopic DAU: Mother is apparently being consider a lock this year.
A24 always manage to bring one title to the Lido, we should find Jesse Eisenberg‘s The Debut in the Telluride-Venice-TIFF voyage. Shy lady Julianne Moore leads Eisenberg, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Havana Rose Liu, Colton Ryan, Lilli Cooper, Maulik Pancholy, and Bernadette Peters in the musical comedy.
After Medeas (2013), masterwork Hannah (2017) and Monica (2022), Andrea Pallaoro will be back in comp with The Echo Chamber – Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli and Susan Sarandon take part of a love story where the boundaries between presence and absence, care and dependence, desire and control blur until they dissolve.
Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz had a lovely showcase on the Lido with Explanation for Everything – he could move up into the comp with Ember végez – this follows Kristóf, a man who discovers black mould covering his apartment wall and begins questioning neighbors about leaky pipes.
Having lined up the fest with ¡Vivan las Antipodas! (2011), Aquarela (2018) and Architecton (2024), the docu addition of the fest should be Green World. Victor Kossakovsky looks at the life of trees.
Edoardo De Angelis last preemed in comp with 2023 opener Comandante (read review). He returns with Il fuoco che ti porti dentro with Vanessa Scalera, Lino Musella, Elena Radonicich, Ivana Lotito and Tommaso Ragno in the tale set Milan — an emotional battlefield about domestic life within a family.
Veteran Lido filmmaker Gianni Amelio last brought Campo di battaglia (read review) in 2024. He should quickly return with Nessun dolore – Alessandro Borghi and Valeria Golino star in a tale about a sleep phenomenon that overtakes an entire town’s population. Two boy scouts remain the only ones awake in a world that has fallen asleep.
Our pick for the Golden Lion winner (and long awaited return to Venice after 2002’s Oasis), Lee Chang-Dong‘s Netflix-backed Possible Love sees four strangers’ paths cross by chance, leading to complex emotional entanglements that challenge their existing relationships and force them to confront uncomfortable truths about love and commitment.
Premiering out of comp with lasy year’s The Holy Boy, Paolo Strippoli is quickly back with the thriller Spiral about a mother-daughter relationship that spirals out of control stars Jasmine Trinca and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
We didn’t think the latest Mike Leigh would be among the prizing here, but Tender Loving Care could indeed bring back some contemporary drama love. Bleecker Street project showcases Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson.
Martin McDonagh will return to Venice with Telluride, TIFF as likely pit-stops for Wild Horse Nine. Pre 1973 Chilean coup, the comedy features John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey.
Having visited the Lido with 2008’s Goodbye Solo, 2012’s At Any Price, 2014’s 99 Homes, Ramin Bahrani‘s Vegas: A Love Story should be next in line. Maika Monroe, Brandon Sklenar, Paul Dano, Judy Greer, Beau Foxx, Maximilliana, Dylan Flashner, Natasha Yi, and Michael Shannon star in the Vegas strip romance.
Veteran filmmaker Marco Bechis has only competed once with 2008’s Birdwatchers and he could bring a second item two decades later. Volver a Buenos Aires features with Adriano Giannini, Paula Cohen, Ana Celentano, Vero Gerez, Olivia Nuss, Adrian Fondari, and Marcelo Chaparro in a tale set in 1978’s Argentina’s The Dirty War era where one is set against the military officers who abducted and tortured him during the dictatorship.
Hopefully she is not the only female filmmaker in comp, but we only have May el-Toukhy‘s drama on our radar. Woman Unknown is about Marie, a former housekeeper, plans an extravagant dinner party for her engagement to the household’s patriarch. As preparations unfold, hidden aspects of her past begin to surface, threatening to disrupt the celebration. Mathilde Arcel F. toplines.
Out of Competition:
Paul Schrader‘s The Basics of Philosophy appears to be tipped for a berth on the Lido. Emmanuel Mouret‘s Trois amies was a comp selection in 2024, he could potentially return with Le cabinet du docteur Albertini featuring Laure Calamy, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing. Another one timer is Álex de la Iglesia who was back at the fest with 2010’s The Last Circus — Marta Hazas, Blanca Suárez, and Carmen Maura star in the thriller La cuidadora (a Netflix film). Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas has finally completed Estela de sombra about four friends traversing time and space. Also supported by Netflix, Fernando Meirelles should undoubtably shore up with Here Comes the Flood in Toronto and perhaps here, with Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson and Daisy Edgar-Jones. American indie helmer Tim Sutton has Howling Wolves as his next feature. They call it a distant sequel to Memphis (Venice selection in 2014) and is about an otherworldly singer tours the dregs of the American West before finding transcendence. Recently acquired by Mubi, Eleanor Coppola‘s docu Making Marie Antoinette would be a welcome addition. She passed away in 2024, her daughter Sofia completed the film. Populating the Lido with several feature film items over the past decades, Shinya Tsukamoto could showcase Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? which stars Rodney Hicks and Geoffrey Rush. Alex Gibney might also packing his suitcases for Telluride and TIFF with Musk. He was at the fest once with Springtime in a Small Town in 2022, it would be nice to see Tian Zhuangzhuang back with Song Of The Birds. This follows a group of city youth sent to the countryside to experience peasant life. When they want to cut down the ancient trees as part of the country-wide agricultural reform, conflict arises between ideology and the inherent laws of nature. No stranger to Cannes, Nanni Moretti‘s Succederà questa notte is about four tenants live in the same building in an Israeli city. Each faces personal problems and emotional voids. Their lives intertwine as they search for fulfillment, connection, and redemption. Louis Garrel, Jasmine Trinca, Angela Finocchiaro, Elena Lietti and Antonio De Matteo star. He last came to the fest with 2019’s Gloria Mundi, Robert Guédiguian’s 25th feature Une femme aujourd’hui with Marilou Aussilloux, Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Pierre Darroussin is about the aftermath of a young woman’s violent assault.
Orrizonti:
Polish filmmaker Kuba Dorabialski‘s sophomore feature Agata the Writer sees Mia Wasikowska play a Polish-Australian satirical novelist who travels from Sydney to Sarajevo to write a war novel. Fremont Iranian–British filmmaker Babak Jalali‘s dramedy A Town in Nova Scotia sees Bill Nighy and Makram Khoury in the tale of Leon, a widowed Irish senior, lives in a Merseyside council flat near his best friend Saleh. When Saleh needs help after surgery and news breaks of a deadly tower fire, Leon wrestles with his daughter’s offer to relocate to Canada. Aga Woszczyńska‘s sophomore feature Black Water features Agnieszka Żulewska and Dobromir Dymecki, this follows the mysterious disappearance of two men amid an ecological disaster on the Åland Islands, their partners begin their own investigation as an oil spill looms offshore. Mikhaël Hers (2018’s Amanda was a Orrizonti selection) cast Alba Rohrwacher and Bastien Bouillon in Bristol – about an unexpected message and the past she thought she had erased resurfaces. I Am Love actor and Italian filmmaker Edoardo Gabbriellini mounted his fourth feature film – La città dei vivi is a book to film emotional drama dealing with loss starring Emanuele Maria Di Stefano, Valerio Mastandrea, Roberta Mattei, Gaia Merlonghi. Mathilde Profit‘s first solo outing is Le Courage des Oiseaux which stars Emmanuelle Béart and Nadia Tereszkiewicz — three women from the same French town, connected by the death of someone they all knew, confront buried wounds and desires over one transformative weekend. Nigerian filmmaker Damilola Orimogunje‘s sophomore feature Dear Ajayi is set in the 90s and tells the tale of two estranged sisters forced to live under the same roof while caring for their paralyzed mother. Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain‘s The Difficult Bride is set in Dhaka, Zaineen prepares for her wedding following beauty rituals and family expectations. This is coined as a feminist supernatural drama. Roberto Saviano wrote Gomorrah and then his own biography transformed into the animated feature film. I’m Still Alive is about an anti-mob activist life under armed guard since being forced to live with police protection. Chinese filmmaker Zhao Hao workshopped this feature debut at the major fests. If I See a Rainbow stars Ma Yili, Song Ningfeng, Zhu Zhuo-er, Yang Haoyu and Lucie Zhang in a tale dealing with self-liberation, societal constraints, emotional inheritance and alienation. Featuring Sergi Lopez and Izïa Higelin, Sylvère Petit‘s feature debut La baleine is set in 1985, this is a father-daughter story with a town and a beached dead whale in the backdrop. Maxime Roy lassoed Anthony Bajon and Olivier Gourmet for his sophomore feature Ma révérence about a mildly depressed thirty-something who believes society owes him compensation for his pain and suffering attempts to rob an armoured truck in pursuit of justice. Tamara Kotevska‘s highly anticipated fiction debut Man vs Flock sees a highway disrupt the peace of a small village and brings tradition into conflict with modernization. Lili Horvát‘s My Notes on Mars arrives after preeming Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time at the fest in 2020. Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend topline the strange tale about a brilliant young scientist with a troubled marriage, who disappears inexplicably while hiking with her husband Sam and a group of friends. Florian Geißelmann, Anton Petzold and Mathilda Smidt are the players featured in Jannis Lenz‘s youth portrait Oasis – about a schoolyard argument that escalates pushing them to seek refuge in nature. Palestinian filmmaker Maha Haj‘s Orient Adagio is a comedy that follows Yazan, a Palestinian filmmaker born and raised in a refugee camp. Jenny Suen‘s Hong Kong set Peaches features Havana Rose Liu, Sophie Thatcher and Lucie Zhang in a tale where two spoiled best friends who scam sugar daddies for a living. When they discover a Hermes Birkin bag they were gifted is a fake, their “boyfriends” and crimes catch up with them. Recent Sundance Grand Jury Prize 2024 winner (short) winner Spanish filmmaker Àlex Lora Cercós‘ The Rift is about a young man with a Catalan mother and a Moroccan father who decides to confront his deepest fears and the prejudices of others by embracing his Muslim faith — all in the least suitable place and during the most tumultuous year in Catalonia’s recent history. François Robic‘s debut Le royaume des aveugles sees Ariane Labed topline a tale set in the valley in the Pyrenees. Magda returns to the village she left years earlier, but rumours soon begin to take their toll. Palestinian-British filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky moved into fiction cinema with Standing at the Ruins – which looks at Hala, an Opera singer living in Rome, who comes back to Cairo to claim her mother’s inheritance. Nicolas Pariser‘s Un peu avant minuit stars Melvil Poupaud, Léonie Simaga, Chiara Mastroianni and Golshifteh Farahani in a tale about a lot of soul-searching. Swedish-Costa Rican filmmaker Nathalie Álvarez Mesén‘s The Wolf Will Tear Your Immaculate Hands sees Alexander Skarsgård amongst the folks in this set in 19th-century Pacific Northwest tale about a Native American governess sent to Christianize two orphaned girls begins questioning her role as family tensions, dark secrets and unexplained events unfold.
Venice Spotlight:
He was in this exact section last year with Tired of Killing: Autobiography of an Assassin, Daniele Vicari now has Bianco which stars Alessandro Borghi, Jonas Bloquet, Finnegan Oldfield, and Pierre Deladonchamps in the tale about an infamous 1961 mountaineering accident which happened as seven elite alpinists tried to scale Mont Blanc. Thai filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng wowed Venice when he launched 2018’s Manta Ray in the Orizzonti section – it won Best Film. The Burning Giant is about a mysterious toxic smog is infecting Bangkok’s migrant workers with a bizarre skin condition, as if they are burned by an invisible fire. An ethnic migrant worker escapes from the quarantine camp to return to his mountaintop village near the Myanmar border. German-French filmmaker Emily Atef‘s Call Me Queen tells the story of the friendship between Rwandan named Queen, a 30-year-old single mother from the slums of Nairobi and Anna, an Irish journalist sent to Kenya in 1999. Veteran filmmaker Alina Marazzi looks at the love story of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa in The Girl with the Leica — Emilia Schüle and Aaron Altaras take on those roles. Riccardo Scamarcio toplines Tommaso Landucci‘s debut fiction film I figli della scimmia tells the story of Dario, the father of a disabled child, begins to receive attention from his brother’s teenage son and discovers he prefers him to his own. The filmmaker presented docu item Caveman in the Giornate degli Autori section. They last appeared at the fest in the comp section with Woman of…in 2023, Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert have The Idiot(s) readied. Aimee Lou Wood, Johnny Flynn, Vicky Krieps and Christian Friedel star in the book to film adaptation of The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky. Chabname Zariab‘s sophomore film When She Hears The Bells is about a woman who helps a group of boys flee Kabul in 2021. Golshifteh Farahani stars.
Giornate degli Autori:
Giornate degli Autori’s Artistic Director Gaia Furrer has been balancing a section with established auteurs and new voices for some years now. The section is usually ten films or so, plus some special screenings totally to just a gbit above the dozen film mark. If the final touches have been applied, Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou‘s sophomore feature A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra feels like a good fit here. This is about Jo, a 15-year-old tomboy. Actress-filmmaker Antonia Campbell-Hughes‘ also on film number two. High End aka Diamond Shitter is set in Geneva’s wealthy international circles, where privileged expatriates navigate their luxurious lives while dealing with personal dramas and hidden secrets. Guy Pearce, Andrea Riseborough and Alessandro Nivola star. Xiaogang Gu‘s The First Taste Of Loneliness is the final part of the Dwelling In The Fuchun Mountains and Dwelling by the West Lake trilogy. This is about a single mother has the idea of restarting her marriage life. Greece’s Konstantinos Antonopoulos gives us Glory B – set in 703AD, two pilloried convicts — a naive beekeeper and a dethroned emperor — face each other and themselves, as they struggle to escape the deserted island they have shipwrecked on. Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul‘s Haven of Hope is about three inmates from a Pakistani asylum home for women dare to venture into the outside world for a day. Brazil’s Fellipe Barbosa family drama Leila Et La Nuit starring Marina Foïs, Roschdy Zem, and Oulaya Amamra sees the French-Moroccan Alaoui family preparing for a holiday reunion in their Marrakech home, eagerly awaiting the arrival of their daughter and sister, Leila. Their fragile balance is shattered when they learn she has been seriously injured while on assignment as a photographer in Burkina Faso. Cameroonian filmmaker Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu‘s La Maison du Vent is about Josette who lives alone in Yaounde, Cameroon. All her children have left for “better lives” in the West. Josette hopes that one of them will come back to live near her. She meets a young woman and the two women become very close. Another Brazilian filmmaker, Maya Da-Rin should be done with Nightsong — which centers on the relationship between women of different generations and cultures living in an environment devastated by the soybean monoculture. Luàna Bajrami, Edvin Camema and Sebastien Halnaut are featured in Italian filmmaker Tommaso Usberti‘s debut Prima della guerra. Actress turned filmmaker Natalia Acevedo has Salón de Belleza in the can. Sam Louwyck and Erwan Kepoa Falé star in the tale set in a beauty salon in a city ravaged by a mysterious disease which becomes a refuge for the afflicted as they linger between life and death. Starring Camille Lou and Dali Benssalah, Anaïs Volpé‘s Sans cesse mon chéri — this is the tale of Will and Rita who help a woman give birth in a pizzeria. It is the first time they have met. They fall irresistibly in love with each other. Finally, Beirut-born Joyce Nashawati‘s sophomore film landed Millie Brady and Elsa Lekakou. Sound of Silence is a gothic horror feature telling the true story of mass-murdering nuns in Greece.
International Critics’ Week:
Not unlike Cannes’ Critics’ Week, Venice International Critics’ Week competition is fixed at precisely seven films, with two additional features completing the selection. From the hundreds of debut features submitted each year, the programming committee led by Artistic Director Beatrice Fiorentino must carefully balance discovery with each impactful selection. We can imagine these filmmakers were considered as part of this year’s process. Bulgarian filmmaker Petar Krumov‘s Barefoot Bull. Youngsters Zdravko Moskov and Vera Velinova star in the teen tale about a boy who seeks his cousin Monique, a TikTok star, believing she’ll be his ticket to popularity and money. But he finds quirky copycat Lucy instead. The two loners form an odd couple in a hostile city. Zoé Cauwet‘s Corps étranger sees Guslagie Malanda as Jeanne whose job is preserving dead bodies. Adopted when she was a baby in Benin, she’s never worried about her roots. One day, however, she happens to see a documentary shot in Cotonou where a fleeting apparition leaves her speechless: she’s just seen her doppelganger. Austrian filmmaker Manuel Wetscher explores the difficulties with friendship between teens in Eclipse – set in 1999 during the solar eclipse. Danish filmmaker Selma Sunniva landed quite the ensemble for Girl Beast. We have the likes of Christian Tafdrup, Trine Dyrholm, and Thure Lindhardt in the drama that explores childhood trauma and dysfunctional relationships. Her twin sister just premiered in Cannes, Marie Rosselet-Ruiz‘s L’une des leurs is about Audrey who dreams of escaping her fate when she meets the Authentiks, a group of Ultras football fans. Céleste Brunnquell toplines. Lebanon’s Rami Kodeih‘s Wolves unfolds during his country’s corruption-induced bank crisis, depositors are denied access to their own savings, two women hatch a daring, elaborate all-night heist to get their money back and pay for a life-saving surgery. Veteran Italian actress Anna Foglietta moved behind the camera for Una storia with Alba Rohrwacher and Guido Caprino – about a small town couple who when their daughter Irene leaves to study far from home, the house feels empty and the balance on which the couple have built their lives seems to falter.
