A new generation of stars, a biopic-event and a competition marked by the presence of Netflix: the 79th Venice Film Festival intends to hit hard, as soon as it opens on Wednesday August 31. Twenty-three films are in the running for the Golden Lion, awarded on September 10, in a festival which is more than ever a launching pad for Hollywood, present in force, before the Oscar season.
The most anticipated is a fictionalized version of the life of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde hair, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, and performed by actress and former James Bond girl Ana de Armas. In gestation for ten years, the film will be shown shortly after the sixty years of the death of the actress – who was also a singer – to the status of a timeless icon.
It is one of the four Netflix productions in competition this year: Venice has become a place of choice for the platform, which cannot claim Cannes trophies because its films are not released in theaters in France.
For this 79th edition, the platform will also present the opening film, White Noise, by New Yorker Noah Baumbach. The director of Frances Ha and Marriage Story, sometimes referred to as the new Woody Allen, adapts the star of letters Don DeLillo, with his companion Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver.
Other acclaimed filmmakers in competition include Oscar-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant, Birdman), for a film in the form of a homecoming in Mexico, Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir) or Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards).
If the jury chaired by the American actress Julianne Moore is almost equal, the competition remains unbalanced, with only eight directors, one year after the coronation of the French Audrey Diwan for The event, abortion movie. On the people side, Penelope Cruz, Cate Blanchett, as conductor in Tar, Catherine Deneuve who is to receive an honorary Golden Lion, while Colin Farell and Willem Dafoe could make the trip to the Lido.
Finally, a whole new generation ready to take over could taste the charms of the lagoon: Timothée Chalamet, 26, who ignited the red carpet last year with Dunes, celebrates his reunion with the director of Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, in the movie Bones and all presented as a cannibal romance…
In addition, will the phenomenon of British pop Harry Styles, 28, make a detour to the Venetian sands? He is in the credits with Florence Pugh of Don’t Worry Darling, out of competition, signed by his partner Olivia Wilde. And the star seed of the year could be Sadie Sink, 20, revealed on the show Stranger Things, who gives the reply to Brendan Fraser as an obese father in The Whale, by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream).
Alongside glamour, the veteran of international film festivals, founded 90 years ago, does not forget politics and questions of creative freedom: its director Alberto Barbera insisted on selecting, among the two Iranians in competition, Jafar Panahi. Golden lion for The circle in 2000, he was recently taken into custody to serve a six-year sentence for “propaganda against the regime”.
A Ukrainian documentary must also be presented out of competition, when the opiate scandal in the United States will be at the center of a shocking documentary. France has five films in competition, including Other people’s children by Rebecca Zlotowski with Virginie Efira, Minea family portrait by Roschdy Zem, or even Athena, a fiction by Romain Gavras, written and produced by Ladj Ly, on a revolt in the suburbs.
After The Father, who had won two Oscars, the French filmmaker-writer Florian Zeller pursues his Anglo-Saxon dream by offering himself Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and again Anthony Hopkins for The son, adapted from his play on father-son relationships.