Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, another of the director’s black comedies, is to premiere at the 79th Venice Film Festival in early September. Element Pictures, the unstoppable Dublin production company, will also be in the main race with Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter. Alberto Barbera, the event’s artistic director, announced one of the strongest line-ups in recent memory, with new films by Noah Baumbach, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Darren Aronofsky and Luca Guadagnino also competing for the Golden Lion.
The Banshees of Inisherin stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon in the tale of two old friends rubbing against one another in the west of Ireland. Reuniting Gleeson, Farrell and McDonagh for the first time since In Bruges, the film was shot on Achill Island last autumn.
McDonagh returns to film five years after his Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won best screenplay at Venice. That film went on to score seven Oscar nominations and two wins.
The Venice Film Festival, which was founded in 1932, has in recent times acted as launching pad for many of the most high-profile films of the incoming awards season, but this year’s bounty is close to unprecedented. Among the most anticipated of the world premieres is Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde.
Ana de Armas stars as Marilyn Monroe in a film that has already stirred up controversy for its extreme content. It is the first Netflix original release to receive the “adults only” NC-17 certificate in the USA. “Blonde is a film that swims in a lot of controversial waters,” Dominik told The Irish Times in May.
The festival opens with another Netflix release. Noah Baumbach, director of Marriage Story and Frances Ha, casts Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig and André Benjamin in an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s seminal 1985 novel White Noise. Driver plays a lecturer in Hitler Studies whose life is upended by an “airborne toxic event”. Alejandro González Iñárritu, twice winner of the Academy Award for best director, returns to his native Mexico with Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, a drama concerning a journalist going through personal traumas. That too will subsequently stream on Netflix.
Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, is back at Venice with an adaptation of Samuel D Hunter’s acclaimed play The Whale. Brendan Fraser, a fine actor who has been somewhat underused in recent years, stars as a 43-stone man trying to re-establish relations with his teenage daughter. Sadie Sink, a star of Stranger Things, appears alongside Fraser in an intriguing release.
Oscar watchers are sure to keep a beady eye on Florian Zeller’s The Son. Follow-up to the director’s The Father, for which won Anthony Hopkins a best actor Oscar, the drama stars Hugh Jackman as a middle-aged man coping with the arrival of his ex-wife and teenage son. Vanessa Kirby, who took best actress at Venice for Pieces of a Woman, co-stars alongside Hopkins and Laura Dern.
Todd Field emerged as a director for the new millennium with In The Bedroom and Little Children two decades ago. He then seemed to slip into development hell, but returns noisily with the promising Tár. An impressive teaser trailer this week presented Cate Blanchett as the first female chief conductor of a top-rank German orchestra. Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant and Mark Strong also appear in Field’s long-anticipated third feature.
Also in competition is Luca Guadagnino’s much chattered-about Bones & All. The adaptation of Camille DeAngelis novel, starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet, is rumoured to touch upon cannibalism. Guadagino, director of Call Me by your Name, has spoken of “a very romantic story, about the impossibility of love and yet, the need for it. Even in extreme circumstances”.
Element Pictures, producers of Oscar-winning pictures such as Room and The Favourite, earned great critical success with Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part 2. The Eternal Daughter reunited Hogg and Tilda Swinton, co-star of that film, for a discreet shoot in Wales during lockdown. The powerful distributor A24 has acquired some rights to a film that is being tentatively filed under “mystery-drama”. With that personnel, one could hardly be more excited.
All the films listed above will compete for The Golden Lion, Venice’s top prize. A busy array of titles are also playing out of competition. Attention will be focused on Walter Hill’s western Dead for a Dollar, Paul Schrader’s crime thriller Master Gardener and, kicking-up much advance buzz, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. That last film features Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Gemma Chan and the director in a satire involving an apparently ideal suburban community in 1950s USA. The red carpet will be well-covered for Wilde’s film.
Julianne Moore heads a competition jury that also includes Mariano Cohn, Leonardo di Costanzo, Audrey Diwan, Leila Hatami, Kazuo Ishiguro and Rodrigo Sorogoyen. The 79th Venice Film Festival runs from August 31st until September 10th.
THE 79TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
IN COMPETITION
Il Signore Delle Formiche, directed by Gianni Amelio
The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky
L’Imensita, directed by Emanuel Crialese
Saint Omer, directed by Alice Diop
Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik
Tar, directed by Todd Field
Love Life, directed by Koji Fukada
Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu
Athena, directed by Romain Gavras
Bones And All, directed by Luca Guadagnino
The Eternal Daughter, directed by Joanna Hogg
Beyond The Wall, directed by Vahid Jalilvand
The Banshees Of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh
Argentina 1985, directed by Santiago Mitre
Chiara, directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli
Monica, directed by Andrea Pallaoro
No Bears, directed by Jafar Panahi
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras
A Couple, directed by Frederick Wiseman
The Son, directed by Florian Zeller
Our Ties, directed by Roschdy Zem
Other People’s Children, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski
OUT OF COMPETITION
Fiction films
The Hanging Sun, directed by Francesco Carrozzini
When The Waves Are Gone, directed by Lav Diaz
Living, directed by Oliver Hermanus
Dead For A Dollar, directed by Walter Hill
Call Of God, directed by Kim Ki-duk
Dreamin’ Wild, directed by Bill Pohlad
Master Gardener, directed by Paul Schrader
Drought, directed by Paolo Virzi
Pearl, directed by Ti West
Don’t Worry Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde
Documentaries
Freedom On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky
The Matchmaker, directed by Benedetta Argentieri
Gli Ultimi Giorni Dell’Umanita, dirs, Enrico Ghezzi, Alessandro Gagliardo
A Compassionate Spy, directed by Steve James
Music For Black Pigeons, dirs, Jorgen Leth, Andreas Koefoed
The Kiev Trial, directed by Sergei Loznitsa
In Viaggio, directed by Gianfranco Rosi
Bobi Wine Ghetto President, dirs, Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo
Nuclear, directed by Oliver Stone
Short films
Maid, directed by Lucretia Martel
Look At Me, directed by Sally Potter
Series
The Kingdom Exodus, directed by Lars von Trier
Copenhagen Cowboys, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Horizons Extra
Origin Of Evil, directed by Sebastien Mariner
Hanging Gardens, directed by Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji
Amanda, directed by Carolina Cavalli
Zapatos Rojos, directed by Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser
Nezhou, directed by Soudade Kaadan
Notte Fantasma, directed by Fulvio Risuleo
Without Her, directed by Arian Vazirdaftari
Valeria Is Getting Married, directed by Michael Vinik
Goliath, directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Horizons
Princess, Roberto De Paolis
On the Fringe, directed by Juan Diego Botto
Victim, directed by Michal Blasko
Trenque Lauquen I, directed by Laura Citarella
Trenque Lauquen II, directed by Laura Citarella
Vera, dirs: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
Blanquita, directed by Fernando Guzzoni
Pour La France, directed by Rachid Hami
A Man, directed by Kei Ishikawa
Bread And Salt, directed by Damian Kocur
Luxembourg, Luxembourg, directed by Antonio Lukich
Ti Mangio Il Cuore, directed by Pippo Mezzapesa
To The North, directed by Mihai Mincan
Autobiography, Makbul Mubarak
La Syndicaliste, directed by Jean-Paul Salomé
World War III, directed by Houman Seyedi
The Happiest Man In The World, directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska
The Bride, directed by Sergio Tréfaut
