Florian Zeller’s The Son, the French director’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning drama The Father, starring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and Anthony Hopkins, will premiere in competition in Venice.
Adapted, like The Father, from his own French-language play, The Son is being produced by See-Saw, the Brit/Australian banner behind 2021 Venice Festival and 2022 awards season darling The Power of the Dog. Sony Pictures Classic has rights.
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, also made the Venice competition line-up. Blonde co-stars include Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody and Caspar Phillipson. Netflix has worldwide rights.
Another Netflix film: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who used the 2014 Venice Film Festival as a launchpad for his eventual Oscar best picture winner Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance will premiere in competition in Venice. The film marks the director’s return to Mexico, 22 years after his 2000 feature debut Amores Perros. The film is billed as a nostalgic comedy set against an epic personal journey of a Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who returns home to work through an existential crisis.
Venice favorite Luca Guadagnino returns to the Lido with competition title Bones and All, a U.S.-set feature that reteams Guadagnino with his Call Me By Your Name Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet. The film co-star Taylor Russell as Maren, a young woman living on the margins of society who falls in love with Lee (Chalamet), an intense and disenfranchised drifter. Jessica Harper, Chloë Sevigny, Michael Stuhlbarg and Mark Rylance co-star. MGM has worldwide rights, with United Artists releasing in the U.S. and Vision Distribution handling Bones and All’s Italian bow.
Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale will premiere in competition in Venice. The film will mark Aronofsky’s return to the Lido after 2017’s Mother! Aronofsky: 2008’s The Wrestler won the Golden Lion, and both The Fountain (2006) and Black Swan (2010) debuted in Venice, making the festival an ideal spot for the director’s return.
Aronofsky’s latest stars Sadie Sink, Brendan Fraser and Samantha Morton in the story of a reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity who attempts, one last time, to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. A24 has worldwide rights.
British auteur Joanna Hogg will bring The Eternal Daughter, strring Tilda Swinton to Venice competition. As will 2017 Venice Golden Lion winner Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) with his latest, The Banshees of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell.
Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, whose 2017 drama Hannah, starring Charlotte Rampling, was part of the Venice competition in 2017, is set to return to the Lido with his English-language debut, Monica. The family drama stars Trace Lysette as a woman who returns home to care for her dying mother. Patricia Clarkson, Adriana Barraza and Emily Browning co-star. The Exchange and UTA Independent Film Group are handling world sales.
No Bears, a film shot in secret by banned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, will also get a Venice competition slot, as will Todd Field’s Tar starring Cate Blanchett, Vahid Jalilvand’s Beyond the Wall, Alice Diop’s Saint Omer and Koji Fukada’s Love Life.
Laura Poitras’ documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed will get a rare competition slot for a non-fiction film.
A Couple, French-shot feature from acclaimed documentarian Frederick Wiseman (City Hall), will premiere in competition in Venice.
Olivia Wilde’s hotly-anticipated Don’t Worry Darling, will have its world premiere out of competition in Venice. The feature stars Florence Pugh and Chris Pine.
Also premiering out of competition on the Lido are Lars Von Trier’s TV Series The Kingdom and Copenhagen Cowboy, the new Danish-set series from Nicholas Winding Refn.
Paul Schrader, a year after wowing Venice with The Card Counter, returns with Master Gardener, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver, which will premiere out of competition.
Walter Hill’s new Western Dead For a Dollar, starring Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe, will premiere out of competition in Venice, as will Kim Ki-duk’s Call of God, a feature completed after the Korean director’s death.
Dreamin’ Wild from director Bill Pohlad (Love & Mercy) starring Casey Affleck, Zooey Deschanel and Walton Goggins, about musical duo Donnie and Joe Emerson, will get its out of competition bow on the Lido.
Also screening out of competition in Venice are Paolo Virzi’s Italian drama Siccita, Ti West’s Pearl, starring Mia Goth and David Corenswet, and several short films, including Maid from Lucrecia Martel, Sally Potter’s Look at Me starring Javier Bardem and Chris Rock.
Oliver Stone’s new, and sure-to-be-controversial, documentary Nuclear, will premiere of out of competition.
Two Ukraine documentaries: Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom from Evgeny Afineevsky, described as an “instant movie”, shot from the beginning of the Ukraine war in February, and The Kiev Trial from Sergei Loznitsa, will premiere out of competition in Venice.
Gianfranco Rosi’s In Viaggio, a documentary on Pope Francis, The Matchmaker, a documentary on western women who joined ISIS, from Benedetta Argentieri will also get Venice debuts, as will non-fiction features Gli Ultimi Giorni Dell’Umantita from Enrico Ghezzi an Alessandro Gagliardo, A Compassionate Spy from director Steve James, Music for Black Pigeons from Jorgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed, and Bobi Wine Ghetto President from Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo on the titual Ugandan rapper-turned-politican.
When The Waves are Done from Lav Diaz and Living from Oliver Hermanus will also get out of competition bows in Venice.
Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera and Roberto Cicutto, president of La Biennale di Venezia, the umbrella organization which runs the world’s oldest film fest, are unveiling the 2022 lineup live from the library of the Biennale Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts in Venice in a ceremony being live-streamed on the festival’s website as well as on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Venice was the only major A-list festival not to cancel its in-person event during the coronavirus pandemic, but the 2022 Lido fest looks to be the first since the start of COVID-19 to take place without any restrictions whatsoever after Italy removed its remaining mask rules for cinemas on June 15.
Venice’s 2021 lineup featured such awards-season contenders as Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, which went on to take the best director Oscar for best director; Denis Villeneuve’s six-fold Oscar winner Dune; and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, which picked up three Oscar nominations following its Lido bow.
Venice however, will have a tough time matching this year’s Cannes line-up, which included the one-two of Hollywood blockbusters Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis alongside such arthouse crowd pleasers as Ruben Östlund’s socially satire, and Palme d’Or Winner, Triangle of Sadness, Park Chan-wook’s South Korean mystery thriller Decision to Leave, and Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s War Pony.
Noah Baumbach’s Netflix film White Noise, an adaptation of the 1985 Don DeLillo novel starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, will open the 79th Venice Film Festival on August 31, Venice announced Monday. 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.
The Hanging Sun, a Sky thriller from director Francesco Carrozzini, based on the Jo Nesbø best-seller, starring Alessandro Borghi, Jessica Brown Findlay, Peter Mullan and Charles Dance, will close the 2022 Venice Film Festival on September 10.
Ahead of the official selection, Venice announced this year’s line-up for its sidebar sections.
Roberto De Paolis’ Princess will open the 2022 Horizons sections, described as a combination of documentary and fantasy, which explores
Victim, a Czech drama from first feature from director Michal Blasko, the Spanish feature On the Fringe, the directorial debut of Spanish actor Juan Diego Botto and Trenque Lauquen from Argentine director Laura Citarella will also screen in the sidebar this year.
Directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel make their Venice debut with Vera
Guy Davidi’s documentary Innocence will also make a Horizons bow this year. The film examines the phenomenon of suicides among Israeli army recruits. Davidi’s 2011 doc 5 Broken Cameras was Oscar-nominated.
Other Horizons features include Blanquita from Chilean director Fernando Guzzoni, For My Country from Rachid Hami, Autobiography from Makbul Mubarak, To the North from Romanian director Mihai Mincan, Kei Ishikawa’s Japanese thriller A Man, the Polish debut Bread and Salt from director Damian Kocur, French feature The Sitting Duck from Jean-Paul Salome, starring Isabelle Huppert, the black-and-white Italian feature Ti Mangio Il Curore from director Pippo Mezzapesa, and Luxembourg, Luxembourg from Antonio Lukich, a Ukraine-set comedy.
World War III from Houman Seydei, which will screen in Horizons, is one of four Iranian films to make the cut for Venice this year.
The Happiest Man in the World from Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska, about the siege of Sarajevo, and Sergio Trefaut’s The Bride, shot in Iraqi Kurdistan, completes the main Horizons feature.
Origin of Evil from Sebastian Marnier will open Venice’s Horizons Extra section.
Hanging Gardens from Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji and Amanda from Carolina Cavalli, and Red Shoes from Mexican director Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser, all first-time directors, will debut in Horizons Extra.
Soudade Kaadan’s Syrian-set Nezouh, the Italian feature Notte Fantasma from director Fulvio Risuleo, Michal Vinik’s Israeli drama Valeria is Getting Married, Goliath from Adilkhan Yerzhanov, and Arian Vazirdaftari’s Iranian thriller Without Her, will also premiere in Horizons Extra.
Over the weekend, Venice unveiled its official poster for the 2022 festival. The artwork, from Italian illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti imagines Venice’s famed Golden Lion as a peaceful lioness —a winking reference, perhaps, to media criticism in recent years over the festival’s lack of female directors in competition — holding up the number 90, a reminder that this year is the 90th anniversary of the first Venice film festival, held in 1932. The festival, founded by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (from 1932-1942 the festival’s top prize for best film was the Mussolini Cup), was suspended during World War II and was not held in 1973, 1977 and 1978.
