The red carpet has been rolled out in front of the Lido’s sparkling white, freshly renovated Palazzo del Cinema, where boatloads of stars will soon be prancing for paparazzi and screaming fans when the Venice Film Festival kicks off Wednesday.
This year’s 82nd edition is set to be the most high-wattage celebration of cinema on the Lido in recent memory, with a cornucopia of anticipated movies led by top talent launching Aug. 27 to Sept. 6.
Julia Roberts, at Venice for the first time, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”) are all confirmed to be attending for Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo-themed drama “After the Hunt,” as are George Clooney and Adam Sandler, both making the trek for Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” in which Clooney plays a movie star undergoing an identity crisis.
Emma Stone is confirmed to be Lido-bound for “Bugonia,” her latest collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos.
Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt will be making the trek for Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” featuring Johnson as two-time UFC heavyweight champ Mark Kerr and Blunt as his wife Dawn. Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac are also coming for Guillermo del Toro’s new take on “Frankenstein.” Isaac is doing double duty, since he also toplines Julian Schnabel’s time-traveling thriller “In The Hand of Dante.”
Netflix — as has been the case in the past — will have a robust Venice presence with a trio of high-profile movies, all in competition. The streaming giant’s Lido launches comprise “Jay Kelly,” “Frankenstein” and Kathryn Bigelow’s politically charged “A House of Dynamite,” set during a fictional national security crisis at the White House.
Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera, in a wide-ranging interview with Variety, said nearly all key cast members of selected films are expected. One notable exception being Israel’s Gal Gadot, who stars in “The Hand of Dante.” Al Pacino, who has a smaller role in the film, will also miss the premiere. Pacino also stars in Gus Van Sant’s film “Dead Man’s Wire” which plays out of competition on the Lido.
Gadot has been at the center of controversy lately following the box office failure of Disney’s “Snow White” that coincided with pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests during its promotion, prompting debate about her support for Israel. The festival did not comment on why Gadot is giving Venice a miss.
Amid this year’s heightened glitz, politics will also be playing prominently on the Lido.
Barbera said he expects pro-Palestinian demonstrations, one of which is planned by local activists on Aug. 30. Another moment of solidarity with Gaza at the fest will likely be in tandem with the Sept. 3 screening of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s hot-button political drama “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was left stranded in a car that had been attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and was later found dead.
Olivier Assayas’ timely political thriller “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” which depicts the rise of Vladimir Putin, played by Jude Law with heavy prosthetics, is bound to stoke, or at least reinforce, anti-Russian sentiment. So is the doc “Notes of a True Criminal” by Oscar-nominated producer and director Alexander Rodnyansky, about the lead-up to him being sentenced in absentia last year by a Moscow court to 8.5 years in prison for his anti-war statements. The Kyiv-born Rodnyansky, who spent nearly three decades living and working in Russia, has been an outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
While politics could heat things up, the actual weather in Venice is expected to be cooler this time than last year, when temperatures nearing 90 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the fest turned the Lido into a sauna.
The forecast on the Lido for the next 11 days is for highs in the mid 70s, making for a more sweat-free clime, though there is a chance of occasional rain.
Let the Venice extravaganza begin.
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