Frankenstein’s monster, Vladimir Putin, vindictive bosses, nuclear war and at the end a Golden Lion. The 82nd Venice Film Festival begins tomorrow.
Dozens of stars are expected on the Lido, major directorial talents are bidding for comebacks and a strong field of films are competing.
Here are some of the anticipated highlights and talking points for the Aug. 27 to Sept. 6 glam-fest:
Photo: AFP
THE MAIN COMPETITION
A total of 21 films are in the running for the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize, won last year by The Room Next Door by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
The most keenly awaited titles include:
Photos: AFP
— The Wizard of the Kremlin by Olivier Assayas
An adaptation of a best-selling book of the same name about Putin’s rise to power, featuring British actor Jude Law as the Russian president.
— A House of Dynamite by Kathryn Bigelow
Photo: AFP
The first film since 2017 by the Oscar-winning director of Zero Dark Thirty which sees White House officials grappling with a missile and nuclear weapons crisis.
— The Smashing Machine by Benny Safdie Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is cast in what appears a tailor-made role as an aging wrestler, with Emily Blunt as his wife.
— The Voice of Hind Rajab by Kaouther Ben Hania
This drama reconstructing the real-life killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli troops in Gaza is set to be one of the festival’s most political films.
— The Testament of Ann Lee by Mona Fastvold
A musical film about a religious sect in the US by the co-writer of The Brutalist, again working with her director husband Brady Corbet.
— Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro
A new big-budget version of the cinema classic by the Mexican director, starring hard-working Oscar Isaac, who is featured in two major Venice films.
— Jay Kelly by Noah Baumbach
A comedy co-written by Baumbach and his wife Greta Gerwig, featuring an A-list cast led by George Clooney, who plays an actor with an identity crisis.
— Bugonia by Yorgos Lanthimos
The latest collaboration between the Greek director and Emma Stone, who won an Oscar for her performance in their 2023 film Poor Things, which won Venice’s Golden Lion.
— No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook
The South Korean auteur Park returns to Venice after two decades with a thriller about a vindictive manager who loses his job.
— The Stranger by Francois Ozon
An ambitious new adaptation of French author Albert Camus’s masterful novella of the same name, shot in black-and-white.
— Nuhai (Girl) by Shu Qi (舒淇) Taiwanese superstar Shu makes her directorial debut with a story about multiple generations of women.
BEST OF THE REST
— After the Hunt by Luca Guadagnino
Julia Roberts makes her Venice debut for the premiere of this cancel culture-themed drama about a sexual assault case at a prestigious American university.
— In the Hand of Dante by Julian Schnabel
Held up by a dispute between the director and his financial backers over its 150-minute length, this crime thriller stars Isaac, with cameos from veterans Al Pacino and John Malkovich.
— Dead Man’s Wire by Gus Van Sant
The American director’s first movie since 2018 centers on a real-life hostage drama at a loan agency, with performances by Bill Skarsgard and Pacino.
Others to watch include big-budget French thriller Chien 51, which will close the festival, and Scarlet by Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda.
DOCUMENTARIES
German director Werner Herzog’s latest film, Ghost Elephants, about a mythical herd of elephants in Angola, stands out. So too does a portrait of veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh by Laura Poitras, who returns to Venice after winning its top prize in 2022 for her documentary about activist photographer Nan Goldin’s campaign against the opioid industry.
Other headliners include Sofia Coppola’s intimate documentary about her friend the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, as well as Broken English by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth about British singer Marianne Faithfull, who died in January.
Viewers will need patience — and a strong bladder — for Director’s Diary, a five-hour epic by dissident Russian director Alexander Sokurov based on his personal diary notes from the Soviet era.
ALSO SHOWING
Netflix has three films in competition — Frankenstein, A House of Dynamite and Jay Kelly — showcasing some of its best hopes of clinching its first Best Picture award at the Oscars next year.
The increasingly long run-times of films — averaging 2 hours and 15 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes at Venice, according to Artistic Director Alberto Barbera — caused him to grumble about the difficulty of fitting them all in the schedule.
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
Standing on top of a small mountain, Kim Seung-ho gazes out over an expanse of paddy fields glowing in their autumn gold, the ripening grains swaying gently in the wind. In the distance, North Korea stretches beyond the horizon. “It’s so peaceful,” says the director of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute. “Over there, it used to be an artillery range, but since they stopped firing, the nature has become so beautiful.” The land before him is the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, a strip of land that runs across the Korean peninsula, dividing North and South Korea roughly along the 38th parallel north. This
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