Ink
Danny Boyle’s movie, adapted by James Graham from his own play, is a primal scene of modern Britain and its agonies over class, culture and empire. Rupert Murdoch buys the Sun newspaper in 1969 and turns it into a raucous circulation powerhouse of sexist smut and Tory politics, while gloating over the timid British establishment who winced at the colonial Australian press baron. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch and Jack O’Connell plays editor Larry Lamb.
Dau
Here is the latest episode – drawn from hundreds of hours of experimental immersive improv footage filmed in Ukraine 15 years ago – in a colossal and controversial multimedia movie project so epic and bizarre that it’s still hard to believe it actually exists. Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky has created a new filmic part of his massive portrait of the Soviet scientist Lev Landau (or “Dau”) and his 60s experimental psychology unit, in which he experiences sexual angst and ponders the possibility of love within a totalitarian society.
Primetime
Documentary maker Lance Oppenheim makes his feature film directing debut, which intriguingly reflects his own interest in creative approaches to nonfiction cinema. Robert Pattinson stars as real-life TV presenter Chris Hansen, host of the 00s reality show To Catch a Predator in which child sexual abusers were lured to a “sting house” where they would be sensationally confronted and arrested. But could it be that Hansen is kind of a predator, too?
The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias
Under the directorial guidance of documentary film-maker Sophie Fiennes, the legendary cultural critic and impish Hegelian thought-maestro Slavoj Žižek gives us his “pervert’s guide to Utopias” – with reference to movies, TV, art and all manner of pop culture. It’s the third and final film in his trilogy, having already given us his “pervert’s guides” to cinema and ideology. (The perversion in question resides in the fetishisation of surfaces and material details, the scrutiny of the physical happenstance, which reveals meaning.) Deconstructive fireworks guaranteed.
Woman Unknown
A chilling new twist on Hitchcock’s Rebecca in this engrossing suspense drama from Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy. Just after the second world war, when Denmark’s governing classes were eager to expunge the taint of Nazi-collaboration, a prosperous widower is going to marry his child’s nanny. But she will have to wear his late wife’s wedding gown at the ceremony; as the big day approaches, a chilling revelation from the past rises to the surface.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger
Having already made a film about Blur, film-makers Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern rise above factional quarrels by making this documentary about the colossally successful reunion tour of Oasis – featuring backstage, rehearsal and onstage footage; a dual interview with the troubled brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher; and a storytelling structure crafted by Steven Knight. Will the film have a positive message about the importance of music? Or a cynical message about an irresistible payday for everyone involved?
Possible Love
Renowned Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong hasn’t released a feature film since Burning from 2018 – although his short fiction collection Snowy Day and Other Stories in its English translation was enthusiastically received last year. This new film, produced by Netflix, is a complex study of the relationship between two tense couples whose lives and destinies intertwine.
Wild Horse Nine
Martin McDonagh’s movies about toxic and sad male relationships have won him awards and golden opinions. Now he is back in Venice with a jet-black comedy thriller about two cynical CIA men, played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, based in Santiago, Chile, in 1973. While preparing for the big task of overturning Salvador Allende’s democratically elected leftist government, Malkovich’s character says he needs a break, so the two of them wind up on vacation on Easter Island – of all the weird places – where grisly secrets are exposed.
Joie de Vivre …
A seven-hour documentary love-letter to Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci (in two parts) from Luca Guadagnino. (Festival director Alberto Barbera says: “I assure you that you will remain glued to the screen for seven hours …”) The film analyses his work, while talking to his collaborators, disciples and superfans – as well as critics, meaning it will have to confront Bertolucci’s notoriously abusive behaviour towards Maria Schneider while making Last Tango in Paris.
Bunker
Florian Zeller’s elegant, laceratingly emotional and painful character studies have captivated audiences and critics for years; now he heads to Venice with an intense drama starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz about a fashionable architect who to his wife’s horror accepts a commission to design a survivalist bunker for a creepy oligarch.
Scherzetto
It isn’t the Venice film festival without an appearance from veteran Italian actor Toni Servillo, and here he plays a grumpy retired illustrator entrusted with the task of looking after his four-year-old grandson for 72 hours while the boy’s parents are away. Their relationship becomes a fractious but revealing confrontation.
Father Joe
Al Pacino and Kiefer Sutherland star in this Manhattan mob drama, scripted by the French king of brashness, Luc Besson. Sutherland is the titular Father Joe, a fiery New York priest taking the fight to the gangsters, personified by Pacino.
