Venice Film Festival to Open With Noah Baumbach’s ‘White Noise’

The Venice International Film Festival has unveiled the opening movie for its 2022 edition: Noah Baumbach’s Netflix film White Noise.

It will mark Baumbach’s return to the Lido three years after his Marriage Story premiered in Venice, en route to picking up six Oscar nominations and one win.

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White Noise stars Marriage Story lead Adam Driver as a professor in the Midwest going through a very dramatic year. Based on the acclaimed 1985 Don DeLillo novel — the first time Baumbach hasn’t worked from his own original idea — the film co-stars Greta Gerwig, Andre Benjamin, Jodie Turner-Smith and Don Cheadle.

Baumbach adapted DeLillo’s novel for the screen and produced White Noise together with David Heyman and Uri Singer.

“It is a great honor to open the [79th] Venice Film Festival with White Noise,” said Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “Adapted from the great Don DeLillo novel, Baumbach has made an original, ambitious and compelling piece of art which plays with measure on multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical. The result is a film that examines our obsessions, doubts, and fears as captured in the 1980’s, yet with very clear references to contemporary reality.”

Baumbach called it an “incredible honor” to open this year’s Venice festival. “This is a place that loves cinema so much, and it’s a thrill and a privilege to join the amazing films and filmmakers that have premiered here.”

The Netflix drama was widely tipped to bow in Venice this year. The streaming giant will be looking to use the Lido platform to launch publicity for the film worldwide and position Baumbach for a 2023 awards run.

Venice will announce its full competition lineup on Tuesday, July 26. Several other Netflix films are in contention for a Lido spot this year, including Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Mexican epic Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths and Blonde, a fictionalized chronicle of the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, from New Zealand director Andrew Dominik, featuring Knives Out and No Time to Die star Ana de Armas as Monroe.

The 79th edition of the Italian fest is set to run Aug. 31-Sept. 10.

A previous version of this story noted that Alessandro Nivola stars in the film. He does not. His children do.

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