Top stars and directors head to Venice for high-powered 2025 festival

(Reuters): Hollywood stars, Oscar-winning directors, Asian heavyweights and European auteurs will vie for top honours at this year’s stellar Venice Film Festival, all looking to make a splash at the start of the awards season.

Running from August 27 to September 6, the 82nd edition of the world’s oldest film festival will showcase a rich array of movies that spans psychological thrillers, art-house dramas, genre-bending experiments, documentaries, and buzzy studio-backed productions.

Among the leading A-listers expected to walk the Venice Lido’s red carpet are Julia Roberts, Emma Stone, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett and Amanda Seyfried.

Netflix returns

A who’s-who of global directors will also be premiering their latest pictures at the 11-day event, including U.S. filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Benny Safdie, alongside top Europeans Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino, and Laszlo Nemes, and Asia’s Park Chan-wook and Shu Qi.

Netflix, which skipped Venice last year, returns in full force in 2025 with a trio of headline-grabbing titles, including Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”, a new take on the classic horror tale starring Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth.

Baumbach’s comedy-drama “Jay Kelly”, starring Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern, is also in the main competition and on the Netflix slate, alongside the geopolitical thriller “A House of Dynamite”, with Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, and directed by Bigelow, who won an Oscar in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker”.

Venice fires the starting gun for the awards season, with films premiering on the Lido in the last four years collecting more than 90 Oscar nominations and winning almost 20, making it the place to be seen for actors, producers and directors alike.

In the past nine editions of the Oscars, the award for Best Actress or Best Actor has gone eight times to the protagonists of films first seen in Venice, including Stone for her role in “Poor Things” in 2024.

Fighters and families

Stone returns to Venice this year, teaming up again with “Poor Things” director Lanthimos in an offbeat satire, “Bugonia”.

The indie icon of U.S. cinema, Jim Jarmusch, will be showing his “Father Mother Sister Brother”, a three-part tale exploring fractured families with a cast that includes Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Adam Driver and Tom Waits.

Another U.S. film getting its first outing at Venice is the MMA fighter biopic “The Smashing Machine”, starring Johnson and Blunt, and directed by Benny Safdie.

A very different biopic is “The Testament of Ann Lee” - a musical take on the life of the radical 18th-century Shaker leader, which stars Seyfried and is directed by Norway’s Mona Fastvold.

European auteurs are well-represented, with Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia”, starring Toni Servillo, selected as the festival’s opening film, while Hungary’s Nemes presents the family drama “Orphan” and France’s Francois Ozon showcases his retelling of Albert Camus’ celebrated novel “The Stranger”.

Another French director, Olivier Assayas, will premiere “The Wizard of the Kremlin” – a political thriller about the rise of Vladimir Putin, starring Paul Dano and Alicia Vikander, with Jude Law playing the Russian leader.

Tragic story of palestinian girl

One film that looks certain to raise emotions is Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, which uses original emergency service recordings to tell the story of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza in 2024 after being trapped for hours in a vehicle targeted by Israeli forces.

“I think it is one of the films that will make the greatest impression, and hopefully (won’t be) controversial,” said the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, his voice trembling as he recalled the movie.

Among the battery of films being shown out of competition is Luca Guadagnino’s MeToo-themed psychological drama “After The Hunt”, starring Ayo Edebiri, Garfield and Julia Roberts, who will be making her red carpet debut at Venice, Barbera said.

The jury for the main competition will be chaired by U.S. director Alexander Payne. He will be joined by fellow directors Stephane Brize, Maura Delpero, Cristian Mungiu, Mohammad Rasoulof, and the actresses Fernanda Torres and Zhao Tao.