Venice film festival 2023: Few Hollywood stars but competition will be fierce for the Golden Lion

The Venice Film Festival, heading into its 80th edition, has, of late, shown remarkable resilience. Somehow or other, in 2020, the organisers managed to defy the virus and stage a physical event with actual fleshy humans. It never seemed likely the Hollywood actors strike would shut down this year’s bash, but when – days before the programme was to be announced – Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers pulled out of the opening slot, it seemed many other high-profile releases would follow. Would the studios really want to launch with no movie stars stepping glamorously from varnished speedboats? “It seemed it was going to be devastating. Everybody was panicking,” Alberto Barbera, festival director, told Variety.

As things worked out, Challengers, a tennis dramedy with Zendaya and Josh O’Connor, was the only title to run screaming. Barbera ended up with one of the flashiest line-ups in the lagoonal event’s history. New films by David Fincher, Yorgos Lanthimos, Bradley Cooper, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Luc Besson and Ryusuke Hamaguchi will compete for the prestigious Golden Lion. Controversially, Venice also welcomes films by Woody Allen and Roman Polanski to the Lido.

At time of writing it seems unlikely many stars of American films will attend. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, has made it clear that promotional duties are forbidden during the action. But only for films associated with members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, letting off many non-American titles. Michael Mann’s Ferrari, among the flashiest US films premiering at Venice, has, however, also secured an interim agreement from the union. It’s a tantalising prospect. Adam Driver plays Enzo Ferrari, racing driver turned car magnate, in a film apparently well suited to the director of Heat and The Insider. But will Driver or costar Penélope Cruz attend? Might they still stay at home in solidarity with colleagues?

We do know that, barring any quick resolution, no SAG members will be strutting the red carpet for the two big US premieres from Netflix in competition. Fincher’s The Killer stars Michael Fassbender in an adaptation of a French graphic novel. The streaming service tells us that “after a fateful near miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.” Tilda Swinton co-stars in a thriller that promises to take Fincher back to his genre roots after the slower, Oscar-nominated Mank.

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Netflix will also be bringing Cooper’s much anticipated Maestro to the festival. The director (might he appear here with only his filmmaking hat on?) stars as the greatly celebrated conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Much of the pre-premiere chatter has focused on Cooper’s decision to wear a prosthetic nose in the role. But an initial trailer, showcasing images shot monochromatically in Academy ratio, otherwise went down well with the festival-monitoring community. Carey Mulligan co-stars as Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein’s loyal – by all accounts, long-suffering – wife for a quarter of a century. For the second year running – after Tár in 2022 – it seems as if Gustav Mahler will be echoing around the gateway to the Adriatic. It pains us to bring this up, but the long road to the 2024 Oscars begins in Venice, and Maestro looks to be positioning itself to play a significant part in the jostling.

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Netflix, now holder of Roald Dahl’s rights, will also be premiering Wes Anderson’s adaptation of the author’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar out of competition. Benedict Cumberbatch and Ralph Fiennes star in a shortish film that is expected to take risks with the source material.

A year after Colin Farrell won best actor here for The Banshees of Inisherin and Martin McDonagh – a member of the 2023 jury – took best screenplay for the same film, Element Pictures, the hugely influential Irish company behind Oscar nominees such as The Favourite and Room, represent the nation with Lanthimos’s apparently lavish Poor Things. Riffing on Frankenstein, the dark comedy, based on an Alasdair Gray novel, finds Willem Dafoe bringing Emma Stone back to life in a fantastic version of the 19th century. Shot over two years ago, Lanthimos’s follow-up to The Favourite and Killing of a Sacred Deer has been eagerly anticipated ever since. Also on screen (but almost certainly not by the Lido) we find Mark Ruffalo, Margaret Qualley and charismatic comic Jerrod Carmichael.

The other big Irish release screens out of competition towards the end of the festival. Robert Lorenz achieved renown as co-producer of such Clint Eastwood films as Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jim and American Sniper. In the Land of Saints and Sinners, his third film as director, groans with Irish cinematic royalty. Liam Neeson, Ciarán Hinds, Kerry Condon, Jack Gleeson, Sarah Greene and Colm Meaney all appear in a drama about an assassin on the run from vengeful terrorists. The film, shot in Donegal and Dublin last year, has been acquired by Netflix for this country and the United Kingdom.

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Since its inception in 1950, the Golden Lion has been among the most prestigious awards in film. Winners have included Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins. Over the last decade, Oscar best-picture nominees such as The Shape of Water, Roma, Joker and Nomadland have triumphed. So, there will eager interest in this year’s race. Neil Young, the British critic and programmer, who publishes annual odds for both Cannes and Venice, has Poor Things in as ante-post favourite at 3/1. Second, at 9/2, he has Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist. An Oscar winner for Drive My Car, the Japanese director, now among the most respected working today, gives us an environmental drama focusing on how a glamping project disrupts a remote community.

Coppola arrives as the only previous winner of the Lion in competition. Having triumphed for Somewhere in 2010, she returns with a study of Elvis Presley’s widow. Priscilla stars Cailee Spaeny as the eponymous protagonist and, a year after Austin Butler wowed in the role, offers Jacob Elordi the opportunity to inhabit the most charismatic of rock ‘n’ roll stars. Derived from Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, the picture looks to be gesturing to the heroine of an earlier Coppola film. “She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in such an amplified world – kind of similar to Marie Antoinette,” the director told Vogue.

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Also in the race for the big prize we find Besson’s Dogman, a drama starring Caleb Landry Jones; Pablo Larraín’s El Conde, turning Augusto Pinochet into a (literal) vampire; and DuVernay’s Caste, a meditation on racism featuring Aunjanue Ellis.

Much attention will, however, be focused on two titles playing out of competition. Allen’s Coup de Chance, starring Niels Schneider and Lou de Laage, finds the octogenarian director shooting in French for the first time. Early reports suggest a typically easy-on-the-eye comedy – the great Vittorio Storaro acts as cameraman – set among another version of the over-educated bourgeoisie. Polanski’s The Palace sounds like a return to early offbeat comedy such as Cul-de-Sac. The Polish director’s compatriot Jerzy Skolimowski co-writes a screenplay that brings us among a millennium eve party at the Gstaad Palace hotel in Switzerland. John Cleese, Mickey Rourke and Fanny Ardant are among the cast.

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The arguments about those two filmmakers are well known. Allen has been accused of sexually molesting his daughter Dylan Farrow. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in 1978 before fleeing the US. Earlier this year, Thierry Frémaux, director of the Cannes Festival, expressed his own reservations about showing Coup de Chance. “The film was not a candidate,” he said. “The controversy would take over against his film, against the other films.” Barbera seemed less concerned. “I am on the side of those who say you have to distinguish between the responsibilities of the individual and that of the artist,” he told Variety. “Also, I am a festival director, not a judge. I judge the artistic qualities of films. And from this perspective, I don’t see why I should not invite Polanski’s film to Venice.”

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At any rate, the inclusion insures that, though there may be few big stars on the Lido, Venice will continue to eat up column inches. There will be no repeat of last year’s circus – remember Harry Styles not actually spitting in Chris Pine’s lap? – that surrounded Don’t Worry Darling, but that may allow the films themselves a little more limelight.

The Irish Times will be there.

The 80th Venice International Film Festival runs from August 30th until September 9th.