Venice Film Festival 2023
Hollywood films competing for the Golden Lion include Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, as well as Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater films that are not in competition
The Venice Film Festival seems to have largely ignored the problems caused by the non-attendance of Hollywood actors due to the Sag Aftra strike when unveiling its program for the 2023 edition.
Venice has traditionally acted in part as a platform for major American releases seeking strong positioning in the fall awards season, and the originally announced opening film Challengers, a tennis drama starring Zendaya, has already been shelved after having to delay its release date.
However, Venice did announce the premieres of high-profile American films, including “Maestro,” the Bradley Cooper-directed biopic about Leonard Bernstein, the racing car drama “Ferrari,” starring Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz, and “The Killer,” a killer drama directed by David Fincher and starring Michael Fassbender.
All three films will compete for the prestigious Venice Golden Lion, but until the US actors’ strike is resolved, none of their stars are likely to be present at the festival’s red carpet events and press briefings.
At a press conference, festival director Alberto Barbera admitted that Venice “[taken] “I was a little surprised” by the strike but said the impact was “very modest” and said Challengers was the only film that was “lost”. However, it was thought likely that, like Part 1, Dune: Part 2 would premiere at the festival in 2021, but nervousness about the actors’ promotional commitments as a result of the strike meant there was likely to be a delay.
A preview poster for “Priscilla” starring Cailee Spaeny. Photo: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
Other high-profile films competing for the Golden Lion include Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla, starring Cailee Spaeny, Greek author Yorgos Lanthimos’ sci-fi comedy Poor Things, starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, and Origin, a drama directed by Ava DuVernay and based on Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction book Caste. Non-US films in competition for the Golden Lion include Agnieszka Holland’s The Green Border, about refugees caught up in the 2021 Belarusian border crisis, Matteo Garrone’s migration drama Io Capitano, Italian drama film Dawn at Last, starring Lily James, and French director Luc Besson’s DogMan, his first film since French courts dropped rape charges against him.
The festival has also brought together a number of well-known names for its non-competitive programme, including films by Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson and William Friedkin. Linklater’s film is Hit Man, based on the true life story of a Texas police officer turned undercover as a hitman, while Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a 39-minute adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story. Friedkin presents a new adaptation of Herman Wouk’s classic novel The Caine Mutiny.
Venice has also found space for new films from Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, both of which have been plagued by controversy in recent years. Polanski’s film The Palace, a drama set in a Swiss hotel on New Year’s Eve and which also stars Oliver Masucci, Fanny Ardant and John Cleese, is his second film selected for Venice since he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) in 2018 after being convicted of statutory rape and subsequent evasion from justice in 1977. Polanski’s previous film, An Officer and a Spy, was not released in the US and sparked widespread protest when it was nominated for 12 César Awards in France. Allen, who has twice been acquitted of sexually abusing his daughter Dylan Farrow – which he strenuously denies – has been working mostly in Europe since his legal battle with streaming giant Amazon ended in 2019 and is directing his French-language romance thriller ‘Coup de Chance’, which was filmed in Paris and stars Lou de Laâge, Valérie Lemercier, Melvil Poupaud and Niels Schneider.
The Venice Film Festival runs from August 30th to September 9th.
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