The 79th annual Venice Film Festival is once again setting the stage for a major awards season launch for some of the year’s most anticipated features.
It was announced Monday that Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise” with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig will open the fest Aug. 31. Now, the full lineup announced this morning includes new outings from Olivia Wilde (“Don’t Worry Darling”), Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”), Darren Aronofsky (“The Whale”), Luca Guadagnino (“Bones and All”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees Of Inisherin”), Todd Field (“TÁR”) and many more.
The 79th annual La Biennale di Venezia runs from Aug. 31 through Sept. 10. Twenty-one features will play in competition at the festival, including “The Whale,” “White Noise,” and “Bones and All.” Other notable features on the competition slate include the next film from “The Souvenir” director Joanna Hogg, “The Eternal Daughter” starring Tilda Swinton. There’s a new feature from documentary auteur Frederick Wiseman titled “Un Couple.” The follow-up to Florian Zeller’s best picture nominee “The Father,” titled “The Son” and starring Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern, will also be in competition. And Iranian director Jafar Panahi, currently detained by officials, even has a new film in competition, “No Bears.”
Out of competition, Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles will make its world premiere, and Wilde and the cast, including Chris Pine and Gemma Chan, will all be in attendance. Paul Schrader’s “Master Gardener” with Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver will premiere out of competition, as will other new films by Lav Diaz, Paolo Virzí, Walter Hill and Ti West.
Expected in attendance this year are Hollywood A-listers in support of their films above, including Chalamet, Driver, Gerwig, Ana de Armas, Jackman, Dern, Swinton, Brendan Fraser, Cate Blanchett, Pugh and Chris Pine, among others.
Julianne Moore is leading this year’s competition jury as its president, and the jury also includes Argentinian director, screenwriter and producer Mariano Cohn; Leonardo Di Costanzo, a director and screenwriter from Italy; Audrey Diwan, a French director and last year’s Golden Lion winner; Iranian actress Leila Hatami; Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan-Great Britain) author and screenwriter and Spain’s Rodrigo Sorogoyen, a director, screenwriter and producer.
Last year a jury led by “Parasite” director Bong Joon-Ho selected Audrey Diwan’s French abortion drama “Happening” as the winner of the Golden Lion.
