Much like Cannes, I’ll be doing weekly updated Venice predictions. A lot of things are going on behind the scenes of this the 90th edition of the Venezia. Intel will keep coming this month, the whole lineup is said to be announced in a little more than 3 weeks.
The amount of American titles for festival boss Alberto Barbera to choose from are now a little less than expected. Despite criticisms, this year’s “weak” Cannes lineup will probably again be superior to Venice’s.
Barbera usually picks 4-6 American films in competition every year. Theres also a quota of 4-5 Italian films in competition. This complicates things further for him when it comes to jamming in as many great films as possible.
Between the Italian and American films, that’s already half the competition.
Barbera has already taken care of one film; Paul Schrader’s “The Master Gardener” will be screening out of competition due to Schradee being honoured with the Gold Lion Achievement in Excellence award.
We also have no idea if A24 has settled its dispute with Venice. This could be a game changer as they have new films from Darren Aronofsky and Joanna Hogg all ready for a fall launch. If you remember, Barbera was very frustrated that he couldn’t nab Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow” in 2019 due to the dispute.
Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” has been selected to screen, but I’m not really sure if it’s in or out of competition.
I’ll be ambitious and name 23 titles that could compete for the Golden Lion this year:
Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise”
Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale”
Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde”
Alejandro González Inarritu’s “Bardo”
Jafar Panahi’s “No Bears”
Todd Field’s “TAR”
Hong Sang-soo’s “Untitled”
Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Les Enfants Des Autres”
Christophe Honore’s “Le Monde d’Hier”
Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones & All”
Emmanuel Crialese’s “L’Immensita”
Andrea Palaoro’s “Monica”
Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Florian Zeller’s “The Son”
Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking”
Ira Sachs’ “Passages”
Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer”
Koji Fukada’s “Love Life”
Amat Eacalante’s “The State of the Empire”
Miguel Gomes’ “Savagery”
Lisandro Alonso’s “Eureka”
Fatih Akin’s “Rheingold”
Helena Wittmann’s “Human Flowers of Flesh”
Last I heard, Polanski’s “The Palace” will not be ready for Venice, but things could change.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.