Some 12 months after the Venice film festival – second only to Cannes in importance – went ahead, thanks to the Hollywood actors strike, with only a smattering of stars, the Lido looks set to again groan with eager celebrities. Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix and Jude Law are just a few of those appearing in the films announced on Tuesday for the official selection of the 2024 festival.
The event kicks off on August 28th with the world premiere of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, sequel to the director’s 1988 breakthrough, and ends on September 7th.
As all Venice watchers had guessed, Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux, sequel to the same director’s Joker, which unexpectedly won the Golden Lion in 2019, lands as the flashiest film in competition. Phoenix returns in the title role. Gaga plays Harley Quinn in the musical drama. Brendan Gleeson, who has a supporting role, may well turn up at what looks like a quiet Venice for Irish representation.
Other highlights in the race for the 2024 Golden Lion include Pablo Larrain’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the charismatic opera singer Maria Callas. This feels like the completion of a trilogy from the Chilean director concerning famous women left tragically alone: Jackie (2016), starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, and Spencer (2021), featuring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, both premiered at this festival.
Pedro Almodóvar, the most celebrated Spanish director of his generation, makes, at the grand age of 74, his English-language debut with The Room Next Door. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore play, respectively, a war reporter and her close friend in a film many suspected would not debut until 2025. Justin Kurzel, director of the searing Nitram, competes with The Order, a crime drama starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult.
Hard though it may be to credit, this is where the race for next year’s Oscars really begins. Last year, Poor Things, an Irish co-production that went on to take four Academy Awards, won the Golden Lion. Awards watchers will be intrigued by Daniel Craig’s turn in Luga Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S Burrough’s Queer. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody as a Holocaust survivor in postwar America, has the look of an epic. That competes against Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman as a CEO embarking on an affair with the younger Harris Dickinson.
Outside the main competition, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, stars of Jon Watts’s action drama Wolfs, will add their suavity to a festival that, since 1932, has offered the most attractive backdrop for a world premiere.
SELECTION FOR THE 81ST VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
COMPETITION
- The Room Next Door, directed by Pedro Almodóvar
- Campo di Battaglia, directed by Gianni Amelio
- Leurs Enfants Après Eux, directed by Ludovic Boukherma, Zoran Boukherma
- The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet
- The Quiet Son, directed by Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin
- Vermiglio, directed by Maura Delpero
- Sicilian Letters, directed by Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza
- Queer, directed by Luca Guadagnino
- Love, directed by Dag Johan Haugerud
- April, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili
- The Order, directed by Justin Kurzel
- Maria, directed by Pablo Larrain
- Trois Amies, directed by Emmanuel Mouret
- Kill the Jockey, directed by Luis Ortega
- Joker: Folie à Deux, directed by Todd Phillips
- Babygirl, directed by Halina Reijn
- I’m Still Here, directed by Walter Salles
- Diva Futura, directed by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt
- Harvest, directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari
- Youth – Homecoming, directed by Wang Bing
- Stranger Eyes, directed by Yeo Siew Hua
OUT OF COMPETITION
Fiction
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton (Opening film)
- L’Orto Americano, directed by Pupi Avati (Closing film)
- Il Tempo che ci Vuole, directed by Francesca Comencini
- Phantosmia, directed by Lav Diaz
- Maldoror, directed by Fabrice du Welz
- Broken Rage, Takeshi Kitano
- Baby Invasion, directed by Harmony Korine
- Cloud, directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi
- Finalement, directed by Claude Lelouch
- Wolfs, directed by Jon Watts
- Se Posso Permettermi Capitolo II, directed by Marco Bellocchio (short)
- Allégorie Citadine, directed by Alice Rohrwacher, JR (short)
Non-Fiction
- Why War, directed by Amos Gitai
- 2073, directed by Asif Kapadia
- Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari, directed by Massimo D’Anolfi, Martina Perenti
- Apocalypse in the Tropics, directed by Petra Costa
- One to One: John & Yoko, directed by Kevin Macdonald, Sam Rice-Edwards
- Separated, directed by Errol Morris
- Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, directed by Goran Hugo Olsson
- Russians at War, directed by Anastasia Trofimova
- TWST/Things We Said Today, directed by Andrei Ujica
- Songs of Slow Burning Earth, directed by Olha Zhurba
- Riefenstahl, directed by Andres Veiel
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
- Leopardi. Il Poeta Dell’Infinito, directed by Sergio Rubini
- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, directed by Peter Weir
- Beauty is not a Sin, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
TV SERIES
- Disclaimer, directed by Alfonso Cuaron
- The New Years, directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen del Amo, Sandra Romero
- Families Like Ours, directed by Thomas Vinterberg
- M – Il Figlio del Secolo, directed by Joe Wright
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
