The 74th Venice International Film Festival, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, will run at Venice Lido from August 30th to September 9th, 2017, directed by Alberto Barbera.
Festival director Alberto Barbera unveiled the lineup for this year today, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
Alexander Payne’s new satire “Downsizing”, starring Matt Damon, will open the fest. The film also stars Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Laura Dern and Jason Sudeikis. Vying for the Golden Lion this year, from a jury led by Annette Bening, are twenty-one competition films including Artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s documentary about the current refugee crisis, Human Flow. Darren Aronofsky, who presided over the Venice jury in 2011, will bring his eagerly-anticipated horror film “Mother!” to the festival. Mother starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Ed Harris, centers around a relationship being tested when unwelcome visitors arrive at their home. Damon will be pulling double-duty at the fest as he will also star in George Clooney’s “Suburbicon”, written by Clooney and the Coen Brothers, about a family morally descending after a home invasion going wrong. It also stars Coen favorites Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin. Guillermo del Toro will debut his Cold War era other-worldly fairy tale “The Shape of Water”, starring Michael Shannon, Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer.And “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, a dark comedy from Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges”), starring Woody Harrelson, Peter Dinklage and Frances McDormand, will also bow on the Lido.Paul Schrader’s religion-themed thriller “First Reformed”, starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, will also premiere in Venice. Abdellatif Kechiche will bring his new 1980s coming-of-age story “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” to the fest. Paolo Virzi will bring his first American “The Leisure Seeker”, starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, to the Lido.
The festival continues its relationship with Netflix with the world premiere of “Our Souls at Night”, with honorary Golden Lions going to the film stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.
Netflix will also premiere its first Italian production, the modern-day mafia saga Suburra, as well as the Errol Morris series “Wormwood”, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker.
Also out of competition, Stephen Frears will debut “Victoria & Abdul”, starring Judi Dench, Ali Fazal and Eddie Izzard about the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria and a young Indian clerk. And Fernando Leon De Aranoa’s “Loving Pablo” will debut, starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Peter Sarsgaard. James Toback’s “The Private Life of a Modern Woman” stars Sienna Miller, Alec Baldwin and Charles Grodin. And Abel Ferrara’s documentary “Piazza Vittoria” will screen, about the neighborhood in Rome where he lives.
New this year, Venice is launching its first VR competition, with a jury headed by John Landis. The lineup includes the film “La Camera Insabbiata” by Laurie Anderson and Huang Hsin-Chien.
The “Horizons” section will open with Susanna Nicchiarelli’s “Nico,1988” about the Velvet Underground singer and Andy Warhol muse. The only American film in “Horizons” is the documentary The Rape of Recy Taylor by Nancy Buirski, about the white gang rape of an African American woman in Alabama in 1944. Anne Fontaine’s coming-of-age story “Marvin” stars Isabelle Huppert and Finnegan Oldfield.
The 74th Venice International Film Festival takes place August 30 – September 9.
