
Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Emma Stone, Dwayne Johnson, Adam Sandler and Idris Elba are just some of the celebrities headlining films at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. Organizers on Tuesday unveiled the starry lineup for its 82nd edition, which kicks off a busy fall film festival season in August.
Two years after launching “Poor Things” at Venice, Yorgos Lanthimos and Stone are returning with “Bugonia,” an English-language remake of the South Korean sci-fi comedy “Save the Green Planet!” that is among the 21 films playing in the main competition. Clooney will also be back as star of Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” in which he plays a famous actor on a trip through Europe with his longtime manager (Sandler).
Some of the other high-profile titles competing for the Golden Lion include: Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” with Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the monster; Benny Safdie’s sports drama “The Smashing Machine,” starring Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife; and Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” in which Jude Law plays Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano plays his spin doctor.
Also in competition are Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite,” a political thriller about an imminent missile strike on the U.S., starring Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, and Jim Jarmusch’s anthology film “Father Mother Sister Brother,” with Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver. Many master filmmakers are also in the section: Park Chan-wook will debut “No Other Choice”; László Nemes has his most personal film yet in “Orphan”; and François Ozon takes on an Albert Camus adaptation with “L’étranger.”
One of the titles bound to make waves is Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the young girl who was killed along with six other relatives when they were trapped in their car under Israeli fire in northern Gaza.
Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” a psychological thriller for the #MeToo era about a complaint of sexual violence at an American university, is debuting out of competition — a joint decision between the filmmaker and Amazon MGM.
It will mark Roberts’ first time at the festival. She co-stars in the film with Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri.


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