An Italian programmer who has knowledge of the entire Venice lineup is telling me that I got 11 comp titles correctly in my latest predictions (below).
He obviously won’t reveal the full lineup to me, just playing games with my head. That’s fine, I’ll take it. He also says I’m missing two Italian, two American and one French film.
A total of 18 films are already locked for competition, with 3 more left to be included. A 21 film competition is the goal, according to him. The entire lineup will be revealed on July 26th.
So which 22 films below are the locks?
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”
What are the aforementioned Italian, American and French films missing? I was told that Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” was definitely chosen by Venice, but is it really in competition?! Two Italian films that I’m thinking could crack the competition are Susanna Nicchiarelli’s “Chiara,” and Gianni Amelio’s “Il Signore Delle Formiche.” The French one must be Roman Gavras’ “Athena”
Original Venice contenders, like Helena Wittmann’s “Human Flowers of Flesh” and Jean-Paul Civeyrac‘s “Une Femme de Notre Temps,” were selected by Locarno earlier in the week.
According to Variety, Graham is confirmed to have joined the cast of “Heat 2,” joining the already-announced Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Adam Driver, Jason Clarke and Odessa Young.