The Venice Film Festival kicked off Wednesday with Hollywood royalty arriving for Italy’s glitzy movie showcase, where a strong lineup of star-packed films will vie with protests about the Gaza war for public attention.
Julia Roberts and George Clooney are among the biggest names at the 82nd edition of the world’s longest-running festival, with top directors from Kathryn Bigelow to Jim Jarmusch all due on the sandy Lido across the Venice lagoon.
The main event at Wednesday (Thursday morning in Manila) evening’s opening ceremony was Francis Ford Coppola presenting a Lifetime Achievement award to German director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo) for his canon of more than 70 films.
Herzog, who said he always searched for the “sublime” in his films, will showcase his latest documentary, Ghost Elephants, about a lost herd in Angola, on Thursday.
Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia—about an Italian president grappling with doubts over whether to sign a euthanasia bill into law—was the first main in-competition movie presented on Wednesday.
“Dwelling on doubt and then allowing that doubt to mature into a decision is something that is increasingly rare,” Sorrentino told journalists.
Mother, a film depicting Mother Teresa as a sometimes ruthless figure struggling to reconcile her views on motherhood and abortion, opened the secondary Orizzonti section.
Eyes were set to quickly turn to Hollywood’s favorite leading man, Clooney, who stepped off a water taxi in Venice with his wife, Amal, on Tuesday.
On Thursday, he will appear in the premiere of Netflix-produced comedy Jay Kelly, directed by Noah Baumbach, in which he plays a top Hollywood actor with an identity crisis.
That same night will see the premiere of the sci-fi comedy Bugonia from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone as a pharmaceutical executive kidnapped by people who mistake her for an alien.
Roberts, meanwhile, will make her first appearance at Venice on Friday in the out-of-competition cancel-culture drama After the Hunt, from Italy’s Luca Guadagnino.
Winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Bear top prize have often gone on to Oscar glory, including Nomadland and Joker in previous years.
