Now that Cannes is in the books, Venice Film Festival boss Alberto Barbera has come out of the shadows, and is starting to hype up the upcoming. 82nd edition, which is set to take place August 27-September 7.
We started working in January without interruption because we had an avalanche of films arriving […] There will be far American films than last year because Hollywood was first hit by COVID, then by the two strikes, then by the fires that slowed down production. It has finally started up again, and there will be many American films, and they are very promising.
In case you need a refresher, last year’s U.S. studio titles were “The Brutalist,” “Babygirl,” “Queer,” “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Maria,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” “Wolfs,” and “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2.”
Barbera isn’t being hyperbolic, on-paper, this upcoming edition of Venice could be major; the amount of potential U.S. titles this year is unlike any in many years. These are the 20 hot festival titles this fall —
After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino)
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Untitled WH Thriller (Kathryn Bigelow)
Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky)
Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
The Way of the Wind (Terrence Malick)
Father Mother Brother Sister (Jim Jarmusch)
The Ballad of A Small Player (Edward Berger)
Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)
Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Kogonada)
Roofman (Derek Cianfrance)
At the Sea (Kornél Mundruczó)
The Drama (Kristofer Borgli)
The Lost Bus (Paul Greengrass)
Deliver Me From Nowhere (Scott Cooper)
Huntington (John Patton Ford)
Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper)
I Love Boosters (Boots Riley)
The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh)
Of course, some of these might not show up at Venice, but they are the hot titles set for festival premieres this fall, whether at Venice, Toronto and/or Telluride.
I’ve only added Malick due to the unpredictable nature of the project, and a recent post, by a noted theologian professor, claiming it was headed to Venice. I’ll believe it when I see it.
It’s not just American films, also eyeing a potential debut at Venice will be new films from international directors such as Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Park Chan-wook, Lucrecia Martel, Julian Schnabel, Laszlo Nemes, Mona Fastvold, Agnieszka Holland, Carlos Reygadas, Romain Gavras, Abdelatif Kechiche, Gianfranco Rosi, Pietro Marcello, Alice Wincour, and many more.
The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that.