Early Tuesday morning, the Venice Movie Competition introduced the lineup for its 82nd version that includes a variety of movies set to make waves internationally the remainder of the 12 months. Whereas lots of the competitors titles had been predicted by IndieWire and others forward of the official announcement on the morning of July 22, the general listing of movies and filmmakers in attendance nonetheless supplied loads of surprises.
Under, we dive into what stood out in regards to the lineup, whether or not it was which movies and studios will not be collaborating this time round, to the methods by which this group of Venice entries differs from those from final 12 months.
No Warner Bros. Photos
Whereas there are different studios that aren’t taking some anticipated options to Venice, like Focus Options with “Hamnet” or Sony with “Klara and the Solar,” the studio most noticeably absent from any a part of the Venice schedule is Warner Bros. Photos. Although the studio has skipped the pageant as lately as two years in the past, the studio has sometimes used Venice as a launchpad for a number of large releases that ended up topping the field workplace, like “Dune,” “Don’t Fear Darling,” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (final 12 months’s pageant opener).
Whereas some posit that the WB absence could stem from “Joker: Folie à Deux” failing to dwell as much as the expectations of its Golden Lion successful predecessor (to place it mildly), the true reply as to why their main fall status launch, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After One other,” will not be coming to the pageant appears to easily be that the director has no real interest in taking his movie to festivals. Although his 2012 movie “The Grasp” was a Venice competitors title, Anderson’s final characteristic to premiere at any movie pageant was “Inherent Vice” in 2014.
Means Much less Acquisition Titles
On the opposite aspect of the equation, the studio with the most important presence at Venice can be Netflix, which has three titles within the Competitors lineup alone (“Frankenstein,” “A Home of Dynamite,” and “Jay Kelly”). Whereas that very same lineup was largely acquisition titles final 12 months, the vast majority of American movies enjoying in competitors, from “Bugonia” to “Father Mom Sister Brother” to “The Smashing Machine” all have distribution in the US already.
Probably the most notable exception is Mona Fastvold’s “The Testomony of Ann Lee” starring Amanda Seyfried, although many count on it to be on A24’s radar after the success it had with Fastvold and her husband and collaborator Brady Corbet on their movie “The Brutalist,” which A24 purchased out of Venice final 12 months.
A New Set of Worldwide Function Contenders
Each the competitors lineup and elsewhere characteristic a number of filmmakers which were within the combine for the Greatest Worldwide Function Oscar earlier than, together with Paolo Sorrentino, of Oscar-winning “The Nice Magnificence” fame, who can be opening the Italy-based movie pageant together with his newest, “The Grace.”
Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, who was most lately a Greatest Documentary Function nominee with “4 Daughters,” additionally has “The Voice of Hind Rajab” in competitors.
And South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, typically cited for example of a director egregiously snubbed by the Academy, is again in competitors as nicely with “No Different Selection,” after his final movie “Choice to Depart” fell simply in need of an Worldwide Function nomination.
Extra Main Administrators Than Anticipated
The 2025 version of the Venice Movie Competition has an Out of Competitors lineup that appears simply as starry because the competitors, and in a method that was not beforehand anticipated. As an example, it’s a shock that one 12 months after “Queer” was in competitors, Luca Guadagnino and Amazon MGM Studios have opted out of that together with his newest movie “After the Hunt,” starring Oscar winner Julia Roberts. Oscar-nominated director Gus Van Sant, who has had two movies in competitors at Venice earlier than, additionally opted out together with his newest movie “Lifeless Man’s Wire,” an acquisition title.
Although documentarian Laura Poitras gained the Golden Lion for her final movie “All of the Magnificence and the Bloodshed,” her newest undertaking “Cowl-Up,” co-directed with journalist Mark Obenhaus, can also be screening out of competitors, although that’s extra attribute of documentaries typically. Sofia Coppola, whose final movie “Priscilla” additionally gained an award at Venice 2023, is again with a brand new documentary “Marc by Sofia.” And much more of a curveball is Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman on the Out of Competitors lineup together with his new quick movie “The way to Shoot a Ghost.”
Operating Instances Stay a Ache Level
One of many largest speaking factors of the Venice 2024 lineup was the surplus of movies in extra of a 150-minute operating time, with the aforementioned “The Brutalist,” being the prime instance at over three hours, with an intermission.
Whereas a movie’s operating time doesn’t precisely damage its probabilities within the competitors, pageant chief Alberto Barbera has identified that it makes a movie tougher to program, as Venice and different festivals typically have a sturdy day by day lineup for attendees to work their schedules round.
Although t are a few movies in competitors which might be at present longer than two and a half hours, like “Frankenstein,” Barbera additionally shared throughout the lineup announcement that Julian Schnabel’s “Within the Hand of Dante” is screening out of competitors just because it’s longer than they’d initially agreed upon.
