This Year’s Venice Rejects included ‘Empire of Light’ and ‘Women Talking’

Now that dust has settled on this past September’s Venice Film Festival, I started asking around about the big titles that might have been rejected by Alberto Barbera.

I surprisingly got a lot of intel this time around. It seems as though Barbera chose most of the known names, some of which ended up getting mixed reviews like “The Son,” “Bardo” and “The Whale.” However, he also said no to numerous high-profile filmmakers.

One title that kept being brought up was Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light.” Mendes wanted to go back to Venice with this one, but the film just didn’t impress the selection committee. The film eventually opted for a Telluride world premiere.

They were also lukewarm on Sebastien Lelio’s “The Wonder,” which was submitted by Netflix. Another title from the streamer that failed to impress was Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a rousing WWII that premiered at TIFF and is now getting some Oscar buzz.

It also looks as though Barbera initially wanted Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” but, when he saw TIFF and Telluride going hard for it, battling it out for the World Premiere, he didn’t think it was further worth it to pursue the film. Polley’s film was eventually offered an out-of-competition slot, which it politely declined.

On the foreign filmmaking side, scratched submissions included Christophe Honore’s “Le Lycceen,” Ulrich Seidl’s “Sparta,” Hong Sangsoo’s “Walk Up,” Fatih Akin’s “Rheingold” and Neil Jordan’s “Marlowe.”

“Glass Onion” and “The Fabelmans” were not submitted to Venice. They both turned out to be major highlights at TIFF.

What Venice did have were top-tier titles such as “TÁR,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Saint Omer,” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” and “No Bears.”