The 82nd Venice Film Festival opens on Wednesday, promising a rich blend of politics, spectacle, and Hollywood glamour.
Running from August 27 to September 6, the festival will feature 21 films vying for the prestigious Golden Lion, alongside a string of high-profile premieres and long-awaited comebacks from some of cinema’s biggest names.
This year’s competition field brings together a strikingly diverse slate. Olivier Assayas adapts the bestselling The Wizard of the Kremlin, with Jude Law stepping into the role of Vladimir Putin.
Kathryn Bigelow returns to filmmaking after an eight-year break with A House of Dynamite, a tense White House drama about nuclear brinkmanship.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson trades in action heroics for the role of an ageing wrestler in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, opposite Emily Blunt, while Guillermo del Toro offers a lavish new take on Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac.
The lineup also pushes into bold political and philosophical territory.
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the tragic killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl in The Voice of Hind Rajab, while Park Chan-wook explores revenge and power in his thriller No Other Choice.
Noah Baumbach, with co-writer Greta Gerwig, lightens the mood with Jay Kelly, a comedy led by George Clooney as an actor caught in an identity crisis.
And Yorgos Lanthimos, fresh off the success of Poor Things, reunites with Emma Stone in Bugonia.
Outside the main competition, Venice will see Julia Roberts make her festival debut in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, a drama that examines cancel culture and a university sexual assault case.
Julian Schnabel presents In the Hand of Dante, a 150-minute crime thriller starring Oscar Isaac and featuring Al Pacino and John Malkovich, while Gus Van Sant returns with Dead Man’s Wire, a hostage drama inspired by true events.
The festival will close with the French big-budget thriller Chien 51, and Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda will unveil his latest feature, Scarlet.