Top stars and directors head to Venice for high-powered 2025 festival
Running from August 27 to September 6, the 82nd edition of the world's oldest film festival will showcase a rich array of movies that spans psychological thrillers, art-house dramas, genre-bending experiments, documentaries, and buzzy studio-backed productions.
Among the leading A-listers expected to walk the Venice Lido's red carpet are Julia Roberts, Emma Stone, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett and Amanda Seyfried.
Netflix returns
A who's-who of global directors will also be premiering their latest pictures at the 11-day event, including US filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Benny Safdie, alongside top Europeans Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino, and Laszlo Nemes, and Asia's Park Chan-wook and Shu Qi.
Netflix, which skipped Venice last year, returns in full force in 2025 with a trio of headline-grabbing titles, including Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, a new take on the classic horror tale starring Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth.
Baumbach's comedy-drama Jay Kelly, starring Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern, is also in the main competition and on the Netflix slate, alongside the geopolitical thriller A House of Dynamite, with Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, and directed by Bigelow, who won an Oscar in 2010 for The Hurt Locker.
Venice fires the starting gun for the awards season, with films premiering on the Lido in the last four years collecting more than 90 Oscar nominations and winning almost 20, making it the place to be seen for actors, producers and directors alike.
In the past nine editions of the Oscars, the award for Best Actress or Best Actor has gone eight times to the protagonists of films first seen in Venice, including Stone for her role in Poor Things in 2024.
Stone returns to Venice this year, teaming up again with Poor Things director Lanthimos in an offbeat satire, Bugonia.
One film that looks certain to raise emotions is Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab, which uses original emergency service recordings to tell the story of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza in 2024 after being trapped for hours in a vehicle targeted by Israeli forces.
"I think it is one of the films that will make the greatest impression, and hopefully (won't be) controversial," said the festival's artistic director, Alberto Barbera, his voice trembling as he recalled the movie.
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