Venice Film Festival: Final Predictions

The last few days have finally given us some much-needed intel to better surmise what might be in competition at Venice — both THR and Variety have weighed in with their picks.

We already knew that “Bardo,” “Bones & All,” “Blonde”, “No Bears”, “Other People’s Children,” “Saint Omer,” and “Love Life” were part of the fest. We can now add new films by Darren Aronofsky, Frederick Wiseman, and Santiago Mitre to the mix.

I was told 20-22 films in competition, the below predictions will surely not be the final lineup, but might be most of it:

These are FINAL:

“Bardo” (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
“The Eternal Daughter” (Joanna Hogg)
“The Son” (Florian Zeller)
“The Whale” (Darren Aronofsky)
“Bones and All” (Luca Guadagnino)
“Blonde” (Andrew Dominik)
“Le Lycceen” (Christophe Honore)
”1985” (Santiago Mitre)
“Tar” (Todd Field)
“No Bears” (Jafar Panahi)
“Walk Up” (Hong Sang-soo)
“Rheingold” (Fatih Akin)
“Chiara” (Susanna Nicchiarelli)
“Other People’s Children“ (Rebecca Zlotowski)
“Monica” (Andrea Pallaoro)
“Athena” (Romain Gavras)
“Love Life” (Koji Fukada)
“L’Immensita” (Emanuele Crialese)
“The State of the Empire” (Amat Eacalante)
“White Noise” (Noah Baumbach)
“Untitled” (Frederick Wiseman)

Out of Competition

“Don’t Worry Darling” (Olivia Wilde)
“Copenhagen Cowboy” (Nicolas Winding Refn)
“The Kingdom Exodus” (Lars von Trier)
“The Master Gardener” (Paul Schrader)

This lineup of names will surely give Cannes a run for its money: Inarritu, Aronofsky, Dominik, Panahi, Baumbach, Schrader, Hong, Guadagnino, Wiseman … There might be more surprises that we’re missing here, but these are the obvious ones as of now.

Some question marks still remain: Ira Sachs’ “Passages,” Walter Hill’s “Dead For Dollar,” Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” William Oldroyd’s “Eileen,” Maria Schrader’s “She Said,” Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder,” Daina O. Pusic‘s “Tuesday” and Tobias Lindholm’s “The Good Nurse.”

The Venice Film Festival is set to announce its lineup on Tuesday, July 26th.