The program for the 79th Venice Film Festival has been presented, promising to be rich not only in major stars but also in important themes, because, as Alberto Barbera stated, “Festivals are not closed bubbles that do not look at reality”
The program for the 79th Venice International Film Festival has been revealed, which will take place at the Venice Lido from August 31 to September 10, 2022.
In competition, there will be, among others, the new films by Baumbach, Amelio, Aronofsky, Gonzales Iñárritu, McDonagh, Crialese, and Guadagnino.
Many stars are expected at the Lido, including Adam Driver, Timothée Chalamet, Colin Farrell, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz and Harry Styles. Alongside them are directors, actors, and actresses from 56 countries, for a festival that, as Director Alberto Barbera also emphasized, is “a window on the world.”
Opening on the evening of August 31 with White Noise by Noah Baumbach.
La Biennale Cinema 2022
On Tuesday, July 26, via a live-streamed press conference, the program for the 79th Venice International Film Festival was announced. Directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by La Biennale di Venezia, it will take place at the Venice Lido from August 31 to September 10, 2022.
Although it is the seventy-ninth edition, the Venice Film Festival is actually celebrating its ninetieth birthday this year.
The first edition, in fact, was held in August 1932 in the magical setting of the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido, with the screening of fifteen films from nine countries. The event, associated with the eighteenth edition of the Art Biennale, concluded without a winner: for the first Golden Lion, one had to wait for the following edition in 1934.
Many materials from that first festival, such as posters, playbills, and programs, as well as film stills and interesting photographic documentation of the event, can be seen today in the exhibition The First International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art from the Archive of the Venice Biennale, at the Portego di Ca’ Giustinian (San Marco 1364, free admission), curated by the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts (ASAC).
First film of the Festival
The 2022 edition of the Venice Film Festival will open on August 31 with the screening in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema of White Noise, the first film in competition, written and directed by US director Noah Baumbach, and starring the director’s partner and muse Greta Gerwig alongside Adam Driver, Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), and the young Raffey Cassidy (Vox Lux, Tomorrowland).
“It was worth the wait to be certain that the film was finished in time – declared Director Alberto Barbera – Baumbach has created an original, ambitious, and compelling work that plays skillfully across multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical. The result is a film that examines our obsessions, doubts, and fears rooted in the 1980s, but with very clear references to contemporary reality.”
We are curious to see how much the honor of opening the festival will bring luck to the New York director, considering that in the last ten years, four of the opening films have gone on to triumph at the Oscars, collecting a total of 18 statuettes.
International cinema
Perhaps it is precisely because of the “Venice effect” at the Oscars that numerous US productions are in competition this year, in addition to Baumbach’s film: The Whale by Darren Aronofsky (Golden Lion in 2008 with The Wrestler) starring Brendan Fraser (The Mummy), Tár by Todd Field starring Cate Blanchett, Bones and All by Luca Guadagnino starring Timothée Chalamet, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by Laura Poitras, and Blonde, the film about Marilyn Monroe by Andrew Dominik, produced by Netflix, starring Ana de Armas (Knives Out, No Time to Die, Blade Runner 2049) as the star and Adrien Brody as Arthur Miller. Finally, also in competition will be Monica, a USA-Italy co-production starring Emily Browning and Trace Lysette, directed by Andrea Pallaoro, a director originally from Trentino who moved overseas at seventeen.
Other European films in competition are also actually co-productions with US production companies. Perhaps the most anticipated is The Banshees of Inisherin by Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), filmed in the Aran Islands in Ireland and starring Colin Farrell. Set in Wales instead is The Eternal Daughter by London director Joanna Hogg starring Tilda Swinton (USA-UK), a “ghost story” in which a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother, returning to the old family home that has since become a hotel, must face long-buried mysteries. From the United Kingdom also comes The Son by Florian Zeller (The Father), a family drama with a stellar cast: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Hopkins.
After last year’s Golden Lion, won by the film Happening and directed by the French Audrey Diwan (present this year as a juror), there is also a substantial French presence in competition with five films: Saint Omer by documentarian Alice Diop, Athena by Romain Gavras, A Couple by Frederick Wiseman, Our Ties by Roschdy Zem, a director also present in Other People’s Children (Les Enfants des Autres) by Rebecca Zlotowski. There is also a bit of France in Love Life by Koji Fukada, a Japanese drama film co-produced by the Parisian company Comme des Cinémas.
Latin America cannot be missing, having earned the Golden Lion twice in recent years thanks to Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Lorenzo Vigas. Coming from Mexico is Oscar winner Alejandro Gabriel Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Birdman) with Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, which tells the existential crisis of a famous Mexican journalist and documentarian upon his return home. The film Argentina, 1985 by Santiago Mitre, set during the civil-military dictatorship, is instead a co-production between the USA and Argentina.
There are two films in competition from Iran. After his participation in the Orizzonti section in 2017 with No Date, No Signature (Un caso di coscienza) which won both the best director and best actor awards, director Vahid Jalilvand returns to the lagoon with Beyond the Wall (Shab, Dakheli, Divar). The film stars the same actors as the previous film, the talented Navid Mohammadzadeh and Amir Aghaee, faces now familiar to the Venetian public. Also from Iran will be the director of Taxi Tehran (Golden Bear in Berlin in 2015), Jafar Panahi with No Bears (Khers Nist), also starring the director himself. For Panahi, too, this is not the first participation in the Venice Film Festival, where he already won the Golden Lion in 2000 with The Circle.
Italian cinema
Finally, the Italian films are highly anticipated, starting with “Lord of the Ants” by Gianni Amelio, with the golden duo Elio Germano and Luigi Lo Cascio, the latter also present in “Chiara” by Susanna Nicchiarelli (Orizzonti award for best film in 2017). Finally, eleven years after his last film, which earned him the Silver Lion in Venice, Emanuele Crialese is in competition with “L’immensità”, an Italian-French co-production starring Penélope Cruz and Vincenzo Amato.
The International Jury of Venezia79
The President of the International Jury for the Venezia79 Competition is Julianne Moore. The presidency has thus been entrusted to a woman for the ninth time in the history of the International Film Festival, and for the fourth time in the last six years, a sign that something is likely changing after the controversies of recent years.
Alongside the American actress, winner of the Volpi Cup for best actress in 2002 with Far from Heaven, there will be a quartet of directors. The first is the Argentine director, screenwriter, and producer Mariano Cohn, in competition last year with Official Competition starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas.
French director Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion in the last edition with Happening, will return to the Lido. With them is the Italian director Leonardo Di Costanzo who, with his latest film The Inner Cage, presented in Venice last year Out of Competition, won the 2022 David di Donatello for best screenplay and best leading actor.
Finally, the Spanish director, screenwriter, and producer Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Oscar nominee for best short film in 2019. The jury will also include Iranian actress Leila Hatami, the unforgettable star of A Separation by Asghar Farhadi, a film that earned her the Silver Bear in Berlin in 2011, and the British-Japanese writer and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Many names and sections at the Festival
Numerous names have been announced in the other sections of the Festival. Out of Competition will be presented The Hanging Sun by Francesco Carrozzini starring Alessandro Borghi, Dead for a Dollar by Walter Hill starring Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe and Benjamin Bratt, Call of God, the posthumous film by Kim Ki-duk shot in Estonia, Dreamin’ Wild by Bill Pohlad starring Casey Affleck and Beau Bridges, the latest film by Paul Schrader Master Gardener starring Sigourney Weaver, Drought by Paolo Virzì starring Claudia Pandolfi, Silvio Orlando, Monica Bellucci and Valerio Mastrandrea and Don’t Worry Darling by Olivia Wilde starring Harry Styles and Florence Pugh.
Among the documentaries, Nuclear by Oliver Stone and In Viaggio, the latest work by Golden Lion winner Gianfranco Rosi, will be presented.
There will also be room for the first episodes of the TV series The Kingdom Exodus directed by Lars von Trier. In the rich program of the Orizzonti section, the singer Elodie, star of Burning Hearts by Pippo Mezzapesa, and X-Factor winner Michele Bravi in Amanda by Carolina Cavalli, will appear for the first time as actors.
As part of the Giornate degli Autori, Padre Pio by Abel Ferrara starring Shia LaBeouf and Asia Argento will be presented.
The 2022 Lions
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to the US director and screenwriter Paul Schrader (First Reformed, American Gigolo) who presented The Card Counter at Venezia78.
“I am deeply honored – stated Paul Schrader, in accepting the proposal – Venice is the Lion of my heart.”
The second lifetime achievement award is for the unforgettable French actress Catherine Deneuve, who stated: “It is a joy to receive this prestigious award at the Venice Film Festival, which I have loved and known for a long time, since Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour received the Golden Lion in its time. It is also an honor to have been chosen for this tribute by the Festival, as it has accompanied me so often for many films. Thank you. With friendship.”
The Godmother
The godmother of the event, following the enthusiasm garnered last year by actress Serena Rossi, will be the Spanish-born Italian actress and presenter Rocío Muñoz Morales (Immaturi – Il viaggio, All Roads Lead To Rome, Un passo dal cielo) who will host both the opening and the awards ceremonies.
The Art of Cinema in Venice
The official poster was designed for the fifth consecutive year by Lorenzo Mattotti, and depicts “a Lioness that soars high and offers us this anniversary, the 90th”, as if to represent the roar of a festival that year after year manages to present an increasingly rich program, without showing the signs of age.
Once again this year from the Hotel Excelsior
The staff of Venezia da Vivere is preparing to follow the Festival day by day right from the Hotel Excelsior, where it all began 90 years ago.
Continue to follow us on our social channels for all the information and curiosities about the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
Article by Pietro Gallina of VeneziaCinema.
Photos by Rossana Viola, Marta Formentello, Lucia Pecoraro, Pietro Gallina, and Cristina di Bella.
