As the world premieres continue to unspool in Cannes, conversations on the Croisette are turning to what may debut on the Lido at Venice Film Festival running September 2-12.
Netflix could be ready to make a splash with both The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, scripted by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, and Fernando Meirelles’ heist thriller Here Comes The Flood with Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
While the powers that be at Warner Bros and Legendary mull over whether to send Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger starring Tom Cruise and it seems unlikely that Albert Serra’s Not The End Of The World will be ready, stronger bets are Tom McCarthy’s satire The Statement, Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care, and Searchlight Pictures’ Chile-set Wild Horse Nine from Venice regular Martin McDonagh.
Further candidates include Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard led by Rooney and Kate Mara; Andrew Haigh’s mountain-set A Long Winter with Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Caitriona Balfe; Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary; Brazilian filmmaker Fellipe Barbosa’s Morocco-set family drama Leila Et La Nuit; Paul Schrader’s The Basics Of Philosophy with Bill Pullman and Sofia Boutella; and Guy Nattiv’s thriller Harmonia starring Bella Ramsey.
Married couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz would boost the red-carpet glamour in support of Florian Zeller’s thriller Bunker, while Felix van Groeningen’s Let Love In draws on the director’s real-life relationship with co-writer and star Charlotte Vandermeersch.
In a poor year for contenders by women directors, standouts include May el-Toukhy’s A Woman Unknown; Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s period horror The Wolf Will Tear Your Immaculate Hands with Alexander Skarsgard; Bangladeshi director Rubaiyat Hossain’s feminist supernatural drama The Difficult Bride; and Sian Heder’s potential awards season play Being Heumann, reuniting the filmmaker with Apple, which took her feelgood hit Coda all the way to multiple Oscars in 2022.
A robust Italian contingent could bring Andrea Pallaoro’s love story The Echo Chamber starring Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli and Susan Sarandon; Nanni Moretti’s romance It Will Happen Tonight, Roberto Saviano’s animated biopic I’m Still Alive co-directed by Ivan Cappiello; Mario Martone’s Naples-set Trick starring Toni Servillo; Daniele Vicari’s mountaineering biopic Bianco; and Gianni Amelio’s drama No Pain.
Shane Meadows could be packing his bags for a trip to Italy in late summer with his first film in over a decade, Chork. Exiled Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov is also in the running with his French-language After, stacked with an A-list French cast of Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Ardant, Vincent Macaigne, Guillaume Gallienne and Louis Garrel; as are Stephane Brize’s A Good Little Soldier starring Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon; and Cedric Kahn’s A Place To Heal about an adolescent psychiatry unit in a French public hospital.
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