Well it’s another year, and another Venice Film Festival announcement. Although most of the Oscar potential’s weight is put on the Toronto Film Festival’s slate, this year’s Venice Film Festival line up looks incredibly promising.
Opening the festival is the much buzzed about world premiere of Gravity , the film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, who are terrifyingly involved in a space shuttle accident.
Other promising features are David Gordon Green’s Joe, starring Nicolas Cage, as an ex-con who meets a teenager and is faced with the age-old theme of redemption. Another is James Franco in the director’s chair for Child of God, and Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem, which stars Matt Damon and Christoph Waltz.
Notable performances, which are steadily gaining traction is Mia Wasikowska and Girls actor Adam Driver in Kelly Reichart’s Night Moves. Also Scarlett Johansson in the sci-fi flick Under The Skin. Johansson has delivered fantastic work so far this year in Sundance’s favorite Don Jon.
In addition Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto, an adaptation of the novel of short stories by James Franco, looks pretty promising as it strives to capture the erratic lives of young teens living in the Bay Area.
The full list in this year’s competition at Venice are listed as follows:
- The Rooftops, dir: Merzak Allouache
- L’intrepido, dir: Gianni Amelio
- Miss Violence, dir: Alexandros Avranas
- Tracks, dir: John Curran
- Via Castellana Bandiera, dir: Emma Dante
- Tom At The Farm, dir: Xavier Dolan
- Child Of God, dir: James Franco
- Philomena, dir: Judi Dench
- La Jalousie, dir: Philippe Garrel
- The Zero Theorem, dir: Terry Gilliam
- Ana Arabia, dir: Amos Gitai
- Under The Skin, dir: Jonathan Glazer
- Joe, dir: David Gordon Green
- The Police Officer’s Wife, dir: Philip Groning
- Parkland, dir: Peter Landesman
- Kaze Tachinu, dir: Hayao Miyazaki
- The Unknown Known, dir: Errol Morris
- Night Moves, dir: Kelly Reichardt
- Sacro Gra, dir: Gianfranco Rosi
- Stray Dogs, Tsai Ming-liang
To see the whole slate for the Venice Film Festival click here.
[Image credit: Adriano Castelli / Shutterstock.com ]