ヴェネツィア映画祭で楽しみにする映画

This year, the Venice Film Festival looks to stake its claim once more as the rightful home of (hopefully) Oscar-buzzed, prestige American productions. With headline slots locked in for Guillermo Del Toro (Frankenstein), Kathryn Bigelow (A House of Dynamite), Noah Baumbach (Jay Kelly), Yorgos Lanthimos (Bugonia) and Luca Guadagnino (After the Hunt), the Italian film festival’s 82nd edition could find itself with multiple Hollywood awards contenders on its hands, with international heavy hitters from Park Chan-wook to Paolo Sorrentino and François Ozon also on the Lido. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the stacked documentary lineup, which includes eye-catching new work from Sofia Coppola, Laura Poitras, Werner Herzog and Tsai Ming-liang, adding to the sense that this year’s event is stuffed to the gills with promise.

Here, we present ten films to look out for.

The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas)

The ever-eclectic Olivier Assayas turns his hand to political drama with The Wizard of the Kremlin, adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel riffing on the rise of artist turned political fixer Vladislav Surkov. With plumb roles for Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander and Jude Law as a young(ish) Vladimir Putin, the film promises an intriguing portrait of a defining figure in post-Soviet politics once described as a “poet among wolves”.

The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)

It’s a Safdie Brothers smackdown this year as sibling auteurs Benny and Josh get set to unveil their big solo outings, Benny landing the first blow with The Smashing Machine, a sports biopic about MMA fighter Mark Kerr starring The Rock in heavy prosthetic makeup. (Josh’s Marty Supreme receives its premiere in December.) Benny’s Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt plays Kerr’s wife, Dawn Staples. Knowing the director, we can expect anything but a straightforward sports biopic. 

No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

Director Park has been plotting his adaptation of Donald E Westlake’s grisly corporate satire The Ax (1997) for well over a decade; in 2019, he said he intended it make it his “masterpiece”. Did he succeed? Lucky attendees at this year’s festival will soon find out; at the very least, the film should offer the Korean maestro the chance to let his freak flag fly after the visually sumptuous but atypically buttoned-up Decision to Leave.

La Grazia (Paolo Sorrentino)

Parthenope may have proved divisive but it would be silly to rule out Paolo Sorrentino serving up something special at the Lido, particularly when it involves his leading man of many years Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty, Il Divo). Billed as a “Truffaut-style love story” set amid shifting cultural and political tides, the film is being kept tightly under wraps ahead of a competition slot opening up the festival.

Calle Málaga (Maryam Touzani)

Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan was a surprise highlight of Cannes in 2022, a stellar marital drama drawing fine performances from its leads, Lubna Azabal and Saleh Bakri. For her follow-up, screening in the festival’s Spotlight section, she casts Almodóvar muse Carmen Maura as a 79-year-old Spanish woman fighting to keep her childhood home in Tangier, Morocco, in a story about ageing that is “vibrant, sensual and defiant”.

Remake (Ross McElwee)

Ross McElwee’s self-reflexive brand of documentary filmmaking was way ahead of its time; you can find echoes of his work in modern masters of the form like Nathan Fielder and John Wilson. Screening as part of a stacked non-fiction lineup at this year’s festival, the cult director’s first film in 14 years deals with the death of his son, Adrian, and promises “a work shaped by absence and propelled forward by the urge to keep looking, even when there’s no clear story left to tell”.

Orphan (László Nemes)

László Nemes won the Grand Prix at Cannes with Son of Saul, an Auschwitz drama that regularly features in best films of the 21st century lists. He’s been mostly quiet since the release of his second film, Sunset, in 2018, controversially raising his voice in 2023 to condemn Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest. Regardless, new work from the former apprentice to Béla Tarr is big news, and Orphan, a family drama set amid the anti-communist fervour of 1950s Hungary, will be watched very closely indeed.

Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel)

Lucrecia Martel’s new film – her first since Zama in 2017 – is a documentary that sounds a lot like an opus, an account of Indigenous rights activist Javier Chocobar’s murder and a meditation on the postcolonial legacies leading our world to the brink of destruction today. “Deep in my heart, I envision this film for machines that require complex narratives to be kinder than us,” says the Argentine director. “We need new narrative structures that don’t endorse the conflict-driven opposition that leads to war.”

Marc by Sofia (Sofia Coppola)

Returning to the Lido after Priscilla had its world premiere here in 2023, Coppola’s first documentary draws on her decades-long friendship with Marc Jacobs to deliver an “intimate, unconventional” portrait of a New York fashion legend.

The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)

No film festival lineup is complete these days without a loopy-sounding prestige musical making its bow on the red carpet, and Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee fits the bill completely. An “epic fable” about the Shaker religious movement starring Amanda Seyfried, the film was co-written by Fastvold with her husband and regular screenwriting partner, Brady Corbet, and boasts original songs by Daniel Blumberg, following up his Oscar-winning score for The Brutalist.

This year, the Venice Film Festival looks to stake its claim once more as the rightful home of (hopefully) Oscar-buzzed, prestige American productions. With headline slots locked in for Guillermo Del Toro (Frankenstein), Kathryn Bigelow (A House of Dynamite), Noah Baumbach (Jay Kelly), Yorgos Lanthimos (Bugonia) and Luca Guadagnino (After the Hunt), the Italian film festival’s 82nd edition could find itself with multiple Hollywood awards contenders on its hands, with international heavy hitters from Park Chan-wook to Paolo Sorrentino and François Ozon also on the Lido. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the stacked documentary lineup, which includes eye-catching new work from Sofia Coppola, Laura Poitras, Werner Herzog and Tsai Ming-liang, adding to the sense that this year’s event is stuffed to the gills with promise.

Here, we present ten films to look out for.

The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas)

The ever-eclectic Olivier Assayas turns his hand to political drama with The Wizard of the Kremlin, adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel riffing on the rise of artist turned political fixer Vladislav Surkov. With plumb roles for Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander and Jude Law as a young(ish) Vladimir Putin, the film promises an intriguing portrait of a defining figure in post-Soviet politics once described as a “poet among wolves”.

The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)

It’s a Safdie Brothers smackdown this year as sibling auteurs Benny and Josh get set to unveil their big solo outings, Benny landing the first blow with The Smashing Machine, a sports biopic about MMA fighter Mark Kerr starring The Rock in heavy prosthetic makeup. (Josh’s Marty Supreme receives its premiere in December.) Benny’s Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt plays Kerr’s wife, Dawn Staples. Knowing the director, we can expect anything but a straightforward sports biopic. 

No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

Director Park has been plotting his adaptation of Donald E Westlake’s grisly corporate satire The Ax (1997) for well over a decade; in 2019, he said he intended it make it his “masterpiece”. Did he succeed? Lucky attendees at this year’s festival will soon find out; at the very least, the film should offer the Korean maestro the chance to let his freak flag fly after the visually sumptuous but atypically buttoned-up Decision to Leave.

La Grazia (Paolo Sorrentino)

Parthenope may have proved divisive but it would be silly to rule out Paolo Sorrentino serving up something special at the Lido, particularly when it involves his leading man of many years Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty, Il Divo). Billed as a “Truffaut-style love story” set amid shifting cultural and political tides, the film is being kept tightly under wraps ahead of a competition slot opening up the festival.

Calle Málaga (Maryam Touzani)

Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan was a surprise highlight of Cannes in 2022, a stellar marital drama drawing fine performances from its leads, Lubna Azabal and Saleh Bakri. For her follow-up, screening in the festival’s Spotlight section, she casts Almodóvar muse Carmen Maura as a 79-year-old Spanish woman fighting to keep her childhood home in Tangier, Morocco, in a story about ageing that is “vibrant, sensual and defiant”.

Remake (Ross McElwee)

Ross McElwee’s self-reflexive brand of documentary filmmaking was way ahead of its time; you can find echoes of his work in modern masters of the form like Nathan Fielder and John Wilson. Screening as part of a stacked non-fiction lineup at this year’s festival, the cult director’s first film in 14 years deals with the death of his son, Adrian, and promises “a work shaped by absence and propelled forward by the urge to keep looking, even when there’s no clear story left to tell”.

Orphan (László Nemes)

László Nemes won the Grand Prix at Cannes with Son of Saul, an Auschwitz drama that regularly features in best films of the 21st century lists. He’s been mostly quiet since the release of his second film, Sunset, in 2018, controversially raising his voice in 2023 to condemn Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest. Regardless, new work from the former apprentice to Béla Tarr is big news, and Orphan, a family drama set amid the anti-communist fervour of 1950s Hungary, will be watched very closely indeed.

Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel)

Lucrecia Martel’s new film – her first since Zama in 2017 – is a documentary that sounds a lot like an opus, an account of Indigenous rights activist Javier Chocobar’s murder and a meditation on the postcolonial legacies leading our world to the brink of destruction today. “Deep in my heart, I envision this film for machines that require complex narratives to be kinder than us,” says the Argentine director. “We need new narrative structures that don’t endorse the conflict-driven opposition that leads to war.”

Marc by Sofia (Sofia Coppola)

Returning to the Lido after Priscilla had its world premiere here in 2023, Coppola’s first documentary draws on her decades-long friendship with Marc Jacobs to deliver an “intimate, unconventional” portrait of a New York fashion legend.

The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)

No film festival lineup is complete these days without a loopy-sounding prestige musical making its bow on the red carpet, and Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee fits the bill completely. An “epic fable” about the Shaker religious movement starring Amanda Seyfried, the film was co-written by Fastvold with her husband and regular screenwriting partner, Brady Corbet, and boasts original songs by Daniel Blumberg, following up his Oscar-winning score for The Brutalist.