Venice: Breaking Down the Lineup, and What It Looks Like in the Strike Era

Lido red carpets may be star-deprived this year, but that didn’t stop the Venice Film Festival from arranging a gorgeous constellation of new movies from supernova directors. (The full lineup is here.)

The SAG-AFTRA strike work stoppage means, of course, that competition directors like Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), David Fincher (“The Killer”), Sofia Coppola (“Priscilla”), Ava DuVernay (her first time in competition and the first African American woman filmmaker to compete, with “Origin”), Saverio Costanzo (“Finalmente L’Alba”), and Michel Franco (“Memory”) will have to do the talking at press conferences and attend step-and-repeats without their actors, if they’re willing. It’s tricky for multihyphenates like Bradley Cooper, who directs and stars as Leonard Bernstein in Netflix’s “Maestro;” IndieWire hears he will sit this festival out.

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Among the Venice film stars who will not be waving to the paparazzi from water taxis are Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, Carey Mulligan, Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Jacob Elordi, Aunjanue Ellis, Lily James, Joe Keery, Rachel Sennott, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Jessica Chastain. Still, many of their films will be in the fall awards conversation — however lurching that may be.

During the lineup’s announcement press conference, Barbera insisted that the slate was largely unaffected by the strikes, with Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya-starrer “Challengers” being the only film pulled from the festival. (MGM and Amazon shifted its release date to April 26, taking it out of this year’s awards chatter and possibly out of next year’s given the date.) Venice will now screen Edoardo De Angelis’s military biopic “Comandante,” about World War II naval officer Salvatore Todaro, on opening night.

These unique conditions could create a Cinderella effect, turning smaller films into breakouts. French auteur Bertrand Bonello joins the competition for the first time with “The Beast” starring George MacKay and Léa Seydoux, a Henry James-inspired dystopian sci-fi set in a world where people can relive their past lives to shed the burden of human emotion; and beloved actress Alba Rohrwacher has roles in Italian director and Venice perennial Costanzo’s “Finalmante L’Alba” and Stéphane Brizé’s “Hors-Saison.” That’s the sort of double bill that gets you noticed for a Golden Lion best actress prize.

Meanwhile, Luc Besson makes a return with “Dogman,” after recent controversy that saw him cleared of rape charges. Venice director Alberto Barbera says the genre-bending trauma redemption saga, starring Caleb Landry Jones, will demonstrate Besson can direct more than action thrillers like “The Professional” and “Lucy.”

There’s also Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who secretly shot “The Green Border” about Syrian refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border; and “Evil Does Not Exist,” a surprise new film from “Drive My Car” Oscar winner Ryûsuke Hamaguchi about the construction of a luxury resort in Tokyo that endangers environmental balance. Amusingly, during the press conference announcing Giorgio Diritti’s drama “Lubo,” starring Franz Rogowski, Barbera said he is “not a big fan” of the Italian director, “but I must admit he surprised me and convinced me” with this three-hour eugenics drama based on a Mario Cavatore book.

One film that remains most intriguing is Franco’s “Memory,” starring Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, and Elsie Fisher. So far, we know absolutely nothing about this movie, but expect a provocation from the Mexican director of “New Order.”

Barbera and his team programmed 23 films in competition this year. Jury president Damien Chazelle and his panel include Jane Campion, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2022 Golden Lion winner Laura Poitras, and Martin McDonagh.

The Out of Competition slate brings some expected, controversial, and adored filmmakers to Venice: Wes Anderson’s Netflix Roald Dahl short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” featuring stop-motion and 16mm; Harmony Korine’s top-secret “Aggro Dr1ft,” starring rapper Travis Scott; William Friedkin’s Herman Wouk courtroom drama “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” with Kiefer Sutherland; Richard Linklater’s Glen Powell action comedy “Hit Man,” heading next to TIFF; along with new films from Woody Allen (“Coup de Chance”) and Roman Polanski (“The Palace”). Polanski remains persona non grata at U.S. festivals but is often celebrated in Venice, where he won the Golden Lion in 2019 for “An Officer and a Spy.” Expect both directors to receive warm welcomes from certain audience quadrants and protest on the ground from others.

Among out-of-competition documentaries, the latest film from Frederick Wiseman, “Menus Plaisirs,” will screen along with a film by Ryuichi Sakamoto son’s Neo Sara about the Japanese composer and pianist’s final concert performance before he died this past March.

In the Horizons sections highlighting emerging filmmakers, documentarians Bill and Turner Ross turn to narrative for the freewheeling “American Honey”-esque road movie “Gasoline Rainbow;” Macedonian breakout “Of an Age” filmmaker Goran Stolevski delivers his third feature, the queer “Housekeeping for Beginners;” British actor Jack Huston makes his directorial debut with boxing drama “Day of the Fight,” starring Michael Pitt; Olmo Schnabel, son of iconic artist Julian Schnabel, directs queer New York-set romance “Pet Shop Boys” with a cast including Willem Dafoe and Emmanuelle Seigner. Filmmakers like Brady Corbet, Lav Diaz, and Ana Rocha de Sousa have all emerged from the Orrizonti lineups with prizes in recent years.

Some films pegged in recent months for Venice that didn’t make the cut and are now set for TIFF (and will now pop at Telluride given their lack of world premiere billing in Toronto’s Monday reveal) include Kitty Green’s “The Royal Hotel” with Julia Garner, Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” with Paul Giamatti, and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative feature “Nyad” starring Annette Bening as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad. IndieWire’s Anne Thompson reported a rumored Bening tribute at Telluride, which will now of course be scrapped.

No-shows on either the TIFF or Venice lineups so far include Ridley Scott’s epic “Napoleon;” Oscar-winning “Promising Young Woman” director Emerald Fennell’s subversive period follow-up “Saltburn;” “A Haunting in Venice” from Kenneth Branagh (set for a September 15 release from Disney that seems on track, given a recent second trailer launch); and “The Harder They Fall” director Jeymes Samuel’s “The Book of Clarence.”

Also nowhere to be found are Ethan Coen’s “Drive-Away Dolls,” rumored to shift its Focus Features release off the September release calendar, and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.” However, he wrapped production in March and is likely still tinkering in the edit.

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