Early Tuesday morning, the The 82nd Venice Film Festival has revealed its official selection of films.Showcasing a selection of films poised for global success in the coming months. Although many of the films in competition had been anticipated by some prior to the official announcement on the 22nd of July, the complete roster of films and directors present still held numerous unexpected choices.
Here's a closer look at the highlights of the selection, from the notable absences of certain films and studios, to the defining characteristics of this year's Venice contenders.Not the same as those from the previous year..
No Warner Bros. Pictures
Although other studios are skipping Venice with anticipated films, such as Focus Features with "Hamnet" and Sony with "Klara and the Sun," the studio whose absence is most conspicuous is...anyWarner Bros. Pictures features on the Venice Film Festival programme. Although the studio has been absent from the festival in recent years, even as recently as two years ago, it often uses Venice to premiere major films that go on to be box office hits, such as "Dune," "Don't Worry Darling," and "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" (which opened the festival last year).
Some people suggest that the lack of WB...might originate in "Joker: Folie à Deux".To say it didn't quite match up to the hype of the film that won the Golden Lion before it is an understatement. The real reason Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another", their big prestige release, isn't showing at the festival seems to be that the director just isn't keen on the festival circuit. While his 2012 film "The Master" competed at Venice, Anderson hasn't premiered a film at any festival since "Inherent Vice" in 2014.
Way Less Acquisition Titles
Conversely, Netflix is set to dominate Venice Film Festival, boasting three films ("Frankenstein," "A House of Dynamite," and "Jay Kelly") vying for the top prize. Unlike last year, when their selection consisted largely of purchased films, most of the American movies competing this year, including "Bugonia," "Father Mother Sister Brother," and "The Smashing Machine," have already secured distribution deals in the States.
The most significant deviation from this isAnn Lee's "The Testament" by Mona Fastvold.Featuring Amanda Seyfried, the film is anticipated to attract attention from A24, particularly given their previous success with Fastvold and her husband and fellow creative partner Brady Corbet on "The Brutalist," a film A24 acquired after its debut at Venice last year.
Fresh Competition in the International Film Category
The festival's competitive selection, along with other sections, showcases a number of directors previously nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar. This includes Paolo Sorrentino, celebrated for his Oscar-winning film "The Great Beauty", who will be launching the Italian film festival with his newest work, "The Grace".
Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, who was most recently a Best Documentary Feature nominee with "Four Daughters," also has "The Voice of Hind Rajab" in competition.
And South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, often cited as an example of a director egregiously snubbed by the Academy, is back in competition as well with "No Other Choice," after his last film "Decision to Leave" fell just short of an International Feature nomination.
More Major Directors Than Expected
The 2025 edition of the Venice Film Festival has an Out of Competition lineup that seems just as starry as the competition, and in a way that was not previously anticipated. For instance, it is a surprise that one year after "Queer" was in competition, Luca Guadagnino and Amazon MGM Studios have opted out of that with his latest film "After the Hunt," starring Oscar winner Julia Roberts. Oscar-nominated director Gus Van Sant, who has had two films in competition at Venice before, also opted out with his latest film "Dead Man's Wire," an acquisition title.
Though documentarian Laura Poitras won the Golden Lion for her last film "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed," her latest project "Cover-Up," co-directed with journalist Mark Obenhaus, is also screening out of competition, though that is more characteristic of documentaries in general. Sofia Coppola, whose last film "Priscilla" also won an award at Venice 2023, is back with a new documentary "Marc by Sofia." And even more of a curveball is Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman on the Out of Competition lineup with his new short film "How to Shoot a Ghost."
Running Times Remain a Pain Point
One of the biggest talking points of the Venice 2024 lineup was the excess of films in excess of a 150-minute running time, with the aforementioned "The Brutalist," being the prime example at over three hours, with an intermission.
While a film's running time does not exactly hurt its chances in the competition, festival chief Alberto Barbera has pointed out that it makes a film more difficult to program, as Venice and other festivals often have a robust daily lineup for attendees to work their schedules around.
Though t are a couple of films in competition that are currently longer than two and a half hours, like "Frankenstein," Barbera also shared during the lineup announcement that Julian Schnabel's "In the Hand of Dante" is screening out of competition simply because it is longer than they had initially agreed upon.
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