The Venice Film Festival is unveiling the official lineup for its 81st edition today. You can follow the announcement live on the festival’s website, or on YouTube, Facebook or X.
Long-running festival director Alberto Barbera, who recently extended his contract through 2026, is presenting the Biennale lineup together with Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, who was appointed last year following the election of Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Venice kicks off on Aug. 28 with the world premiere of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s hotly-anticipated sequel to his 1988 comedy-horror hit, screening out of competition. The film, which reunites the original Beetlejuice cast, including Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, goes out internationally via Warner Bros. beginning Sept. 4 and in North America on Sept. 6.
Israeli director Dani Rosenberg (Vanishing Soldier) will screen his new feature, Of Dogs and Men, in Venice’s Horizons sidebar. The drama, shot shortly after the October 7 attacks, follows a 16-year-old woman who returns to her kibbutz seeking her lost dog amid a terror spree, navigating horrors while encountering the unfolding disaster beyond the fence in Gaza.
Alex Ross Perry, famed music video director and Her Smell filmmaker, is bringing Pavements, a documentary on seminal American indie band Pavement, to Horizons. Other Horizons highlights include Familar Touch, from the experimental U.S. director Sarah Friedland, Deepak Rauniyar’s Indian-set crime drama Pooja, Sir, and Wishing on a Star, the latest from Czech filmmaker Peter Kerekes (107 Mothers).
In the Horizons Extra section, the Egyptian media satire Seeking Haven for Mr.Rambo, the debut feature from acclaimed short-film director Khaled Mansour, will have its world premiere, as will King Ivory from U.S. director John Swab, starring Ben Foster.
From Darkness to Light, a documentary from directors Michael Lurie and Eric Friedler about Jerry Lewis’ unreleased Holocaust movie The Day the Clown Cried, featuring never-before-seen footage of the legendary lost film, will screen in Venice’s Classics section devoted to documentaries about cinema.
French star Isabelle Huppert (Elle, The Piano Teacher) will head up this year’s Venice competition jury as president and pick the 2024 Golden Lion winner alongside fellow jury members including directors James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, and Julia von Heinz; and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.
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