The Venice Film Festival is unveiling the lineup for its 2025 festival today. Festival director Alberto Barbera will announce the official lineup — including the titles in competition for the Golden Lion at the 82nd Venice festival — via a live stream on the festival’s website.
You can watch along here.
Italian Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) will open this year’s festival with La Grazia (Grace), his latest feature with long-time collaborator Toni Servillo. La Grazia, co-starring Diamonds actor Anna Ferzetti, will premiere in competition on Aug. 27.
Jim Jarmusch’s triptych Father Mother Sister Brother, starring Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver, also looks like a lock after Mubi boss Efe Cakarel signaled that it will likely be in Venice competition this year.
Among the hot awards titles tipped to be heading to the Lido are Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, from A24, featuring Dwayne Johnson as two‑time UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife Dawn; Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo–inspired thriller After the Hunt, for Amazon MGM Studios, starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri; Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare-era drama Hamnet starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn, which Focus Features and Universal are releasing; and Bugonia, an adaptation of Jang Joon-Hwan’s 2003 South Korean sci-fi film Save the Green Planet!, from Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator Emma Stone, which Focus Features will release stateside, with Universal Pictures handling internationally outside of Korea, where CJ ENM will release.
Netflix, usually a major presence in Venice, sat out last year but is expected to be back in force for 2025, with Noah Baumbach’s comedy‑drama Jay Kelly, headlined by George Clooney; Guillermo del Toro’s dark reimagining of Frankenstein, featuring Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth; The Ballad of a Small Player, the gambling-themed drama from Conclave director Edward Berger starring Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, and Fala Chen; and Kathryn Bigelow’s geopolitical thriller A House of Dynamite, starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso and Jared Harris, among the titles thought to be Venice-bound.
Two-time Oscar-winner Alexander Payne heads up this year’s competition jury as president, and together with international film talents including Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof Chinese actress Zhao Tao and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, will pick the 2025 Golden Lion winner.
The 2025 Venice film festival runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 9.
Opening Film
La Grazia, dir. Paolo Sorrentino (in competition)