Aliens, Frankenstein
New offerings from directors Assayas, Guillermo del Toro, Yorgos Lanthimos and Kathryn Bigelow are vying for the top prize at the festival, which opens Wednesday evening with a love story from Venice regular Paolo Sorrentino.
Sorrentino, best known for “La Grande Belleza” (“The Great Beauty”), has teamed up again with longtime collaborator Toni Servillo for “La Grazia”, set in their native Italy.
Greece’s Lanthimos and Stone — who worked together on the Oscar-winning “Poor Things” — reunite again for sci-fi “Bugonia” about a high-powered executive kidnapped by people who think she is an alien.
“Frankenstein” is a big-budget interpretation of the cinema classic from Mexico’s del Toro, starring Oscar Isaac.
The latest from Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty”, “The Hurt Locker”) is “A House of Dynamite”, a political thriller starring Idris Elba. Both films are to be streamed on Netflix.
Fellow American director Jarmusch makes his debut in the main Venice lineup with “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother”, which he has called “a funny and sad film” starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Jarmusch regular Tom Waits.
Included in the main competition is also the latest documentary from Italy’s Gianfranco Rosi, “Sotto le Nuvole” (“Below the Clouds”), a black-and-white ode to Naples.
Out-of-competition documentaries include Sofia Coppola’s profile of fashion designer Marc Jacobs; the latest from former Golden Lion winner Laura Poitras about veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh; and a profile of British singer Marianne Faithfull from filmmaking team Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth.