Julianne Moore and her jury will get down to business: stars and moviegoers arrive on the Lido on Wednesday August 31 for the start of the 79th Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival, which has become a springboard for the Oscars.
Guest of honor, Catherine Deneuve is expected on the red carpet to receive, at the age of 78, an honorary Golden Lion for her entire career. The French star had already received the Volpi cup for best actress for Place Vendôme by Nicole Garcia in 1998.
Change of generation in the evening with New Yorker Noah Baumbach, who opens the competition with the official screening of White Noise, adapted from one of writer Don DeLillo’s seminal novels. The 52-year-old filmmaker, author of Frances Ha, The Meyerowitz Stories Where Marriage Story, finds his favorite performers, his companion Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver. The selection of this film at the opening is a new mark of recognition for the online video giant Netflix, which produced it, and which this year is lining up no less than four films and a series on the lagoon.
In total, 23 feature films (including eight by female directors) are in competition for the Golden Lion, which is to be awarded on September 10. Twenty years after winning the interpretation prize there for far from paradise, actress Julianne Moore is presiding over the jury in Venice this year. She must meet the other members of the jury on Wednesday, including Audrey Diwan, the French director who won the Golden Lion last year, the Iranian Leila Hatami (seen in A separation of Asghar Farhadi) or the Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen.
Among the highlights of the festival, the expected arrival of a cohort of Hollywood stars, always numerous to appreciate the sweetness of the lagoon.
As of Thursday, Cate Blanchett should climb the stairs to Tar of Tidd Field, where she plays a brilliant conductor, before giving up the star the next day to Timothée Chalamet. The Franco-American, who won the applause meter on the red carpet last year for Dunesis back for Bones and Allthe new film by Luca Guadagnino, the author of Call Me By Your Name.
Venice also expects to see Penelope Cruz parade for two films, a year after her Venetian coronation at Almodovar, Isabelle Huppert, and hopes to see the landing of the British pop phenomenon Harry Styles, starring in the film of his companion Olivia Wilde (Don’t Worry Darling). One of the most anticipated stars at the turn is probably the Cuban actress
Ana de Armas, noticed in James Bond girl last year and who takes up the challenge of interpreting Marilyn Monroe, sixty years after her death. This biopic, signed Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), promises to cause a sensation, with a feminist reinterpretation of the life of the cinema icon, based on the story of the same title, Blonde hairby novelist Joyce Carol Oates.
Also eagerly awaited by moviegoers, the new films by Alejandro González Iñárritu (the Revenant, birdman), in the form of a return to the roots in Mexico, by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Pi), or Joanna Hogg, with the magnetic Tilda Swinton on the bill, or the Iranian Jafar Panahi and the veterans Walter Hill and Paul Schrader.
French authors are not to be outdone, from Rebecca Zlotowski to Romain Gavras, via the actor who went on to direct Roschdy Zem. Not to mention the playwright Florian Zeller who, after the success of his companionship with Anthony Hopkins for The Fatherpresent The Sonanother adaptation of one of his plays, this time with Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern.
The opening and closing ceremonies are broadcast by Canal+, which became the exclusive partner of the Mostra after being replaced by France Télévisions and Brut at the Cannes Film Festival, its backyard until then.