Venice competition includes films from Clooney, del Toro, Aronofsky

Venice competition includes films from Clooney, del Toro, Aronofsky

PanARMENIAN.Net - In its 74th year, the Venice Film Festival is once again debuting a slate of potential Oscar contenders from top directors, including George Clooney, Darren Aronofsky and Guillermo del Toro, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Festival director Alberto Barbera on Thursday, July 27 unveiled the lineup for this year at the Cinema Moderno in Rome.

"I’m very satisfied," Barbera said about the lineup. "I have to say that I am 97 percent satisfied in the sense that there are only maybe two or three films that we wanted to have for the festival, and we couldn’t, because they will go to other festivals. So all the films that we saw and that we wanted to have are in the lineup of this year’s festival."

As previously announced, Alexander Payne's satire Downsizing, starring Matt Damon, will open the fest in competition. The film is about a family that seeks a better life through shrinking. The film also stars Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Laura Dern and Jason Sudeikis.

Vying for the Golden Lion this year, from a jury led by Annette Bening, are 21 world premieres.

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei will enter the competition with his documentary about the current refugee crisis, Human Flow.

Darren Aronofsky, who presided over the Venice jury in 2011, will bring his eagerly-anticipated horror film Mother! to the festival. Mother!, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Ed Harris, centers around a relationship being tested after the arrival of unwelcome visitors.

Damon will be pulling double-duty at the fest as he will also star in George Clooney's Suburbicon, written by Clooney and the Coen Brothers, about a family morally descending after a home invasion goes very wrong. It also stars Coen favorites Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin.

Guillermo del Toro will debut his other-worldly Cold War era fairytale The Shape of Water, starring Michael Shannon, Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer.

And Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a dark comedy from Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), starring Woody Harrelson, Peter Dinklage and Frances McDormand, will also bow on the Lido.

Paul Schrader's religious-themed thriller First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, will also premiere in Venice.

Abdellatif Kechiche will bring his 1980s coming-of-age story Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno to the fest, and Paolo Virzi will premiere his first American The Leisure Seeker, starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, to the Lido.

Out of competition, the festival continues its relationship with Netflix with the world premiere of Our Souls at Night, with honorary Golden Lions going to the film's stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

Netflix will in Venice also premiere its first Italian production, the modern-day mafia saga Suburra. And it will screen the Errol Morris series Wormwood, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker, the festival's only non-world premiere.

Also out of competition, Stephen Frears will debut Victoria & Abdul, starring Judi Dench, Ali Fazal and Eddie Izzard about the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria and a young Indian clerk. And Fernando Leon De Aranoa's Loving Pablo will debut, starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Peter Sarsgaard.

James Toback's The Private Life of a Modern Woman stars Sienna Miller, Alec Baldwin and Charles Grodin. And Abel Ferrara's documentary Piazza Vittoria will screen, telling the story of the neighborhood in Rome where he lives.

Rodarte sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy will premiere their feature film Woodshock, starring Kirsten Dunst and Pilou Asbaek.

And Kitano Takeshi's new yakuza film Outrage Coda will close the fest.

New this year, Venice is launching its first VR competition with 22 films, with a jury headed by John Landis. The lineup includes the film La Camera Insabbiata by Laurie Anderson and Huang Hsin-Chien.

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