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The undeniably robust 82nd edition of the Venice International Film Festival has come to a triumphant finish.

Heading into Saturday night’s awards ceremony, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab was widely viewed as the movie to beat for this year’s Golden Lion. The powerful Gaza-set drama, which tells the story of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl’s desperate pleas for rescue after Israeli forces killed her relatives, received a thunderous 21-minute standing ovation at its world premiere, one of the longest in the Venice Film Festival’s history.

But the film ended up going home with the festival’s Silver Lion for the Grand Jury prize, aka second place.

“I dedicate this award to the Palestinian Red Crescent and to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are real heroes,” Ben Hania said in her powerful acceptance speech. “The...

The 69th BFI London Film Festival has added four additional titles to its program, including U.K. premieres of Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia,” Claire Denis’ “The Fence” and Gastón Solnicki’s “The Souffleur,” plus the world premiere of Samuel Abrahams’ “Lady.”

“Lady” marks the directorial debut of Samuel Abrahams, featuring Sian Clifford from “Fleabag” in what festival programmers describe as a “larger-than-life performance” as a narcissistic aristocrat who hires a struggling filmmaker to document her every move for an eccentric mockumentary.

Lady Isabella longs for the spotlight and sees local talent show “Stately Stars” as her long-desired break. Despite reveling in the camera’s presence on her grand estate, pressures mount and things take a surreal turn when she begins losing her sense of self. The U.K. production also stars Laurie Kynaston and Juliet Cowan.

“Lady” will have its world premiere as part of the Dare strand. MetFilm Studio is behind the production.

The London Film Festival has added a number of titles to this year’s line-up, including Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia.

La Grazia will arrive in London following a debut bow in Venice. The film follows Mariano De Santis, a fictional President of the Italian Republic. A widower and a Catholic, he has a daughter, Dorotea, a legal scholar like himself. As his term draws to a close, amid uneventful days, two final duties arise: deciding on two delicate petitions for a presidential pardon. True moral dilemmas, which become tangled in ways that seem impossible to unravel, with his private life. Driven by doubt, he will have to decide. And, with a deep sense of responsibility, that is exactly what this remarkable Italian President will do.

The pic stars Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti. The movie is produced by Fremantle’s The Apartment in association with Numero 10 and PiperFilm.

Movies starring Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, and Mia McKenna-Bruce have joined the lineup of the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival.

Organizers said Thursday that they have added the world premiere of Samuel Abrahams’ Lady, the U.K. premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, the U.K. premiere of Claire Denis’ The Fence and the U.K. premiere of Gastón Solnicki’s The Souffleur to the 2025 program.

The 2025 BFI London Film Festival runs Oct. 8-19 in partnership with American Express. Below is a closer look at the latest additions to the festival’s lineup.

La Grazia

Director-screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino. With Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano. Italy 2025. 131 min. Courtesy of Mubi. Language Italian. With English subtitles.

Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino is reunited with The Great Beauty actor Toni Servillo, who plays a fictional president reaching the end of their final term in office.

The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is now in the books. Margot Robbie, Ryan Coogler, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Rian Johnson, Janet Yang, Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall were among those who came just to watch movies. Screenings were introduced with a group meditation (Chloé Zhao), a song (Jesse Plemons) and a wave (man of few words Bruce Springsteen). Adam Sandler and Emma Stone posed for photos in the streets with ecstatic local schoolkids. And the Oscar race came into clearer focus.

Below, you can read my biggest awards-related takeaways from the fest.

Four high-profile films that already have U.S. distribution had their world premieres in Telluride: Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix), Bugonia (Focus), Hamnet (Focus) and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century). How did they go over?

Focus has plenty of cause for celebration, as both Bugonia and Hamnet played like gangbusters and look almost certain to...

Mubi has set a Dec. 5 U.S. and Canada theatrical release for Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia. The news comes in the wake of the pic receiving a 6 1/2 minute standing ovation on the first night of the Venice Film Festival.

In the movie, Mariano De Santis is the President of the Italian Republic. No connection to any real-life presidents; he is entirely a product of the author’s imagination. A widower and a Catholic, he has a daughter, Dorotea, a legal scholar like himself. As his term draws to a close, amid uneventful days, two final duties arise: deciding on two delicate petitions for a presidential pardon. True moral dilemmas, which become tangled, in ways that seem impossible to unravel, with his private life. Driven by doubt, he will have to decide. And, with a deep sense of responsibility, that is exactly what this remarkable Italian President will do. The...

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, widely hailed as a return to form for the 2013 Oscar winner, has locked down its theatrical release date in North American cinemas. Mubi will open La Grazia in theaters on Dec. 5, teeing up a potential Oscars campaign for its inimitable Italian star, Toni Servillo.

La Grazia opened the 82nd Venice Film Festival last week and was greeted with mostly rave reviews, including from The Hollywood Reporter.

“By the director’s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo’s [character] De Santis,” wrote THR’s chief critic, David Rooney. “But it’s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work.”

Heaping praise on Servillo’s performance, Rooney summed up his take, writing: “The alchemical ideal in actor-director collaborations.”

A political drama of the most introspective kind,...

Five days into the fall film festivals, we’ve got ourselves a real awards season. Maybe even a monster awards season.

And for that, we might have to thank a couple of iconoclastic international filmmakers and a pair of British works of literature written in 1600 and 1818, or thereabouts.

That’s the conclusion after the first five days of the Venice Film Festival and the first three (out of only four) of the Telluride Film Festival, where Guillermo del Toro’s epic adaptation of “Frankenstein” and Chloé Zhao’s emotionally devastating Shakespeare riff “Hamnet” debuted and cemented themselves as formidable contenders.

Some of the high-profile films that have premiered so far...

When does a gambling habit become a gambling problem? Is it when you’re down to your last wadded-up banknote, which you keep stuffed in your sock till all else has been spent? Or maybe it’s that extreme moment you’re forced to fake your own death, just to throw off your creditors. Surely things have gotten out of hand when the British government sends a private detective (who looks an awful lot like Tilda Swinton) all the way to Macau to collect the fortune you swindled from an unsuspecting old lady to subsidize your addiction.

In “Ballad of a Small Player,” Colin Farrell is a reckless high roller, all flop sweat and false bravado, who’s taken up residence in a decadent Chinese casino-hotel. He has three days to settle his Hk$145,000 hotel bill, or else they turn him over to the authorities. Gambling is all about stakes,...

For many years, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino couldn’t miss, making films that were widely embraced by critics and audiences, and, in two cases, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: 2013’s The Great Beauty won the best international feature Oscar and 2021’s The Hand of God was nominated for it.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that both of the aforementioned films, and five others directed by Sorrentino, have starred the great Italian stage-turned-screen actor Toni Servillo — or that Sorrentino’s least well-received film in years, 2024’s Parthenope, was the first one in years that he had without Servillo.

Sorrentino and Servillo have reunited on La Grazia, which opened the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday and then the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, and the good news is that the film — in the opinion of many, including THR’s film critic and myself — marks a return to form for Sorrentino,...

Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino returned to the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday evening, opening the 82nd edition with his latest feature La Grazia. The in-competition drama about the final days of a fictional Italian presidency was greeted with an ovation that lasted 6 minutes and 20 seconds.

La Grazia stars Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti. Sorrentino directed the film from his own screenplay in his first film on the Lido since his 2021 Grand Jury Prize winner The Hand of God.

Related: Venice Film Festival 2025 In Photos: Arrivals, Opening Night, Red Carpets & More

After tonight’s screening, which had been preceded by a ceremony honoring Werrner Herzog with a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion, the applause started as soon as the credits began, and paused briefly for a mid-credit scene. After the scene, the crowd, which included attendees Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett, was more enthusiastic.

Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘La Grazia’ receives a 6 1/2-minute...

The Italians love Paolo Sorrentino.

His latest drama “La Grazia,” which kicked off the 82nd Venice Film Festival on Wednesday night, was met with a four-minute standing ovation on the Lido.

The story of an aging politician dealing with his own mortality — and deciding the outcome of two clemency cases in his final days in office — brought the Venice crowd to their feet as Sorrentino clutched his chest and waved to his fans inside the Sala Grande Theatre. The audience was made largely of Italian officials and members of the industry with some star power in the form of Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett.

“La Grazia” re-teams the Oscar-winning Sorrentino with his male muse and “The Great Beauty” star, Toni Servillo, who has appeared in seven of the director’s last 10 feature films to date. Servillo plays a fictional Italian president named Mariano De Santis, who is torn by doubts...

Paolo Sorrentino’s latest feature, La Grazia, is opening the Venice Film Festival this evening.

Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti star in the drama about an Italian president in the final six months of his last term who faces some deep moral decisions including two potential pardons and the question of signing a bill legalizing euthanasia.

La Grazia, written and directed by Sorrentino, reteams him with longtime muse Servillo, who also starred in the filmmaker’s Oscar winner The Great Beauty.

So far, there’s largely high praise for La Grazia, which is running in competition. Here are some early reactions:

In his review, Deadline’s Pete Hammond wrote, “Clearly the current political winds in both Italy and America have got this masterful filmmaker again thinking about the government and what it means to be a moral leader.”

Praising star Servillo, Hammond pointed out that the actor never has been nominated for an Oscar,...

The 2025 edition of the world’s oldest film festival kicked off with a poignant moment of movie history Wednesday night as American film legend Francis Ford Coppola took the stage inside Venice’s Sala Grande cinema to present German uber-auteur Werner Herzog with an honorary Golden Lion, the event’s highest honor for lifetime achievement.

The two cinema legends — Coppola is also a Venice film festival Golden Lion honoree from 1992 — adorably walked hand in hand down the red carpet to the openingnight ceremony.

Herzog’s moment in the Venice spotlight got underway with a video tribute to his gloriously eccentric filmography, spanning Fitzcarraldo; Grizzly Man; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; My Best Fiend; and so many more.

Presenting him with his statue, Coppola said he “came here to praise Werner Herzog, and it’s not enough to praise Werner Herzog. One must celebrate the fact that someone like him can actually exist.

Paolo Sorrentino is, and I apologize if I’m blowing your mind right now, Italian. Like, very Italian. My last name is “Bibbiani” and I will never be one-tenth as Italian as Paolo Sorrentino. His films are often love letters to his country, and “La grazia” is no exception. It literally begins with three jets soaring across the sky, spraying the Italian flag like a canopy over the world in vast plumes of green, white and red. If any American director did this we’d all roll our eyes — but to be fair, the jets would also transform into $100 million action figures, so it would probably strike a different tone.

The director has rediscovered his voice working again with actor Toni Servillo, who plays a president looking back on a career of empty rectitude

Paolo Sorrentino has rediscovered his voice, his wan humour and his flair for the surreal and sensational set piece; this wintry, elegant movie is a welcome reassertion of his natural style after the facile and weirdly humourless affectations of his previous, very disappointing film Parthenope. It is a dry comedy of grief and regret which wears its dreamy melancholy and ennui like a well-tailored if fussily old-fashioned suit, and it returns Sorrentino to the various mysterious tableaux of political power that recurred in Il Divo from 2009, about political mandarin Giulio Andreotti,...

In something of a rare feat, all three of the most prominent European film festivals chose the works of homegrown talents to kick off their latest edition. Earlier this year, German director Tom Tykwer opened Berlinale with The Light; French debutant Amélie Bonnin’s Leave One Day did the same for Cannes; now the 82nd Venice Film Festival gets underway with La Grazia, the latest by arguably the 21st century’s most-celebrated Italian director, Paolo Sorrentino. It’s decidedly better than the other two fest-openers, probing some profound questions about life and death that are accompanied by Sorrentino’s trademark visual flair. While the resolution doesn’t live up to...

The movies of Paolo Sorrentino, like “The Great Beauty” and “The Hand of God,” have always been bursting with color and movement and emotional energy, with torn-up romantic and family passion, all rooted in a baroque flamboyance that can be compelling but also messy and overstated — which is why I blow hot and cold on him, and am usually in the middle. The most recent Sorrentino film, “Parthenope,” was, I thought, a disaster of florid loose ends that never came together.

But in “La Grazia,” the new Sorrentino movie that opened the Venice Film Festival tonight, this director who has long suggested (at least to me) a kind of made-for-tv version of Fellini in the ’70s pulls himself together in a surprising and ironically fastidious way.

The film’s central character is the president of Italy, Mariano De Santis — a fictional character played, in a performance of meticulous and weirdly domineering passivity,...

To appreciate the power and hope of Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film La Grazia, which opened the 2025 Venice Film Festival in competition, it is important to have some context of some of the past collaborations of the Oscar-winning director and his frequent star Toni Servillo.

In 2008, both gained international fame with Il Divo, in which Servillo gave an award-winning performance as Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time Italian Prime Minister and leader of the Christian-Democratic Party. This was a ruthless power player who dominated Italy’s political scene with an iron fist for the second half of the 20th century. Ten years later Sorrentino would cast Servillo in the flamboyant Loro as the Machiavellian Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, a businessman to whom corruption was not a stranger (sound like anyone we know?). In between, they made the wondrous The Great Beauty, which took the Foreign Language Film Oscar. More recently, Sorrentino has...

“Bureaucracy is meant to be slow,” the President of Italy (Tony Servillo) explains to a member of his inner circle. “That’s the point: to give people time to reflect.” But how much time is too much, and what good is reflection for a lame duck politician with six months left in his final term and a seemingly clinical inability to make any difficult choices before he leaves office?

So far as we can tell at the start of Paolo Sorrentino’s uncharacteristically sedate and sexless “La Grazia,” which feels like forced Catholic penance for the Neapolitan flesh parade of last year’s poorly received “Parthenope,” reflection is just about the only thing the unnamed President has done for most of the last seven years. A widowed jurist whose even-keeled — or completely dormant — personality convinced the people of Italy that he was the right man to rescue them from an economic crisis of some kind,...

Paolo Sorrentino shared a brief tribute to the veteran Italian actor and producer Claudio Vecchio, who died earlier this month in Rome, during this afternoon’s presser for his Venice competition title La Grazia.

Vecchio starred in Sorrentino’s 2013 feature The Great Beauty and has a brief role in La Grazia.

“Claudio was a friend of many of us. He was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, in addition to being a dear friend,” Sorrentino said of Vecchio.

“He had a small role in La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) that made me very proud, because he was one of the best Italian actors. But he always turned down a lot of parts. Other people wanted him to be an actor, but he turned down all those roles. He was a producer.”

Sorrentino added: “He was the most difficult actor to conquer in the history of...

Paolo Sorrentino re-teams with “The Great Beauty” star Toni Servillo on his latest film “La Grazia,” which opens the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday night. In the multi-layered moral drama, Servillo plays a fictional president of Italy named Mariano De Santis who is conflicted about whether he should sign into law a bill that would allow euthanasia in Catholic Italy.

In “La Grazia,” which can be translated in English as “Grace,” Servillo’s lovable character also contends with other ethical and legal dilemmas. De Santis is a man of great integrity, despite the fact that he sneaks an occasional cigarette that he inhales deeply through his single lung. The president also warms to a real Italian rapper known as Guè.

The film — which is Sorrentino’s 10th feature and his seventh starring Servillo — is produced by Annamaria Morelli for Fremantle-owned The Apartment and by Sorrentino’s own outfit Numero 10,...

The Venice Film Festival is upon us, and that means a lot of movies with awards season potential. But what to watch?!

THR‘s chief film critic surveys the Lido lineup for the films he’s most looking forward to.

After The Hunt

Luca Guadagnino’s latest gives Julia Roberts what reportedly is one of her most complex roles as Alma Olsson, a self-possessed Yale philosophy professor in a comfortable marriage, put in a difficult position when her PhD candidate protégée (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Alma’s colleague and friend (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. A thorny examination of contemporary morality ensues, as Alma is forced to wade through professional, political and personal issues stemming from her secretive past without bringing down her neatly structured world. Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny round out the ensemble cast.

Duse

The stirring large-canvas classical storytelling of Pietro Marcello’s 2019 literary adaptation Martin Eden snagged...

Francis Ford Coppola has been recruited by the Venice Film Festival to deliver the so-called “Laudatio” speech honoring Werner Herzog during the event’s opening ceremony.

As previously announced, Venice will honor the iconoclastic German director — whose body of work comprises “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo” and Nosferatu the Vampyre” — with its 2025 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

The award will be presented by Coppola to Herzog during the Venice opening ceremony on Aug. 27.

Coppola was in Italy earlier this month where on Aug. 5 he underwent a non-emergency medical procedure in Rome, related to heart issues.

The festival will open with Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia” that re-teams the Oscar-winning director with “The Great Beauty” actor Toni Servillo.

At Venice, Herzog will be premiering his new documentary “Ghost Elephants,” about the search for a herd of a elusive elephants in a virtually uninhabited swathe of the Angola highlands that is as large as England.

In advance of the Venice premiere of his latest film La Grazia, Paolo Sorrentino touched down at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday where the writer-director talked at length about his career, influences and why movies “saved” his “sad life”.

Speaking with Serbian filmmaker Ognjen Glavonić at the Bosnian Culture Center, the Italian filmmaker told a packed audience about his great fondness for Diego Maradona, noting that when the late Argentine soccer legend arrived in Naples to play for the city’s local club in 1984, it made a huge impression on the young director. “When I was 14 and Maradona arrived in Naples, for the first time I understood what a show was,” he said. “Maradona told us – told me, told the Napoiltan people – what is a big, unbelievable show. And I found out the same thing through cinema – the opportunity to put on a big show.”

Sorrentino is also set...

Academy Award-winning director Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”) is readying the world premiere of his latest film, “La Grazia,” which will compete for the Golden Lion at this month’s Venice Film Festival.

But as for future plans, the Italian auteur was non-committal during a masterclass Sunday at the Sarajevo Film Festival — although he braced the audience to expect the worst.

“I don’t like to have objectives. I don’t love the idea that I have to do new things,” the director said. “I stay at home without doing anything, and then suddenly something comes up in my mind that becomes an obsession, and I say, ‘Ok, let’s do a movie about this obsession.’”

About where those obsessions might lead next, Sorrentino stayed mum. But his advice to moviegoers was simple: Don’t get your hopes up.

“Probably I am going to do worse, like many directors,” he said,...

The 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its Open Air Program, consisting of two sections, Open Air and Open Air Premiere.

The program set for the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema will be “showcasing some of the most important arthouse films of the year, as well as cinematic classics,” organizers said. “Some of the films in this program will be presented by acclaimed directors, actors, and screenwriters, [2025] recipients of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Paolo Sorrentino, Willem Dafoe, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgård, and Michel Franco,” who received the honor several years ago.

Meanwhile, the new Open Air Premiere lineup will “showcase films from the former Yugoslav region in the unique setting of the Uniqa Open Air Cinema Stari Grad,” fest organizers highlighted.

Check out the full Sarajevo open air lineups below.

Open Air Program

The Pavilion (Paviljon) – opening film

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia,...

Willem Dafoe will become the latest recipient of Sarajevo Film Festival’s honorary Heart of Sarajevo award, at the festival’s 31st edition (August 15-22).

Dafoe will give a masterclass at the festival, discussing his career and reflections on contemporary filmmaking with the local audience.

“[Dafoe’s] body of work is something to which every actor aspires,” said festival director Jovan Marjanovic. “Every time he steps in front of the camera, he demonstrates that he is a true master of his craft.”

Dafoe has worked with a roll call of top US and international filmmakers across his career, including Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow,...

Indie film distributor Well Go USA Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Italian director Gabriele Mainetti’s Rome-set martial arts movie “The Forbidden City” following its international launch at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Set in the cosmopolitan melting pot of Rome’s Piazza Vittorio neighborhood, “The Forbidden City” sees two very different souls intersect. One is a mysterious young woman with some mean kung fu skills who has just arrived from China in the Italian capital in search of her missing sister; the other is the son of an indebted local restaurant owner who has disappeared with his lover. These two lost souls are catapulted into an action-packed descent into the criminal underworld of the Italian capital dominated by the Chinese mafia.

Mainetti, who is known internationally for previous genre-bending titles “They Call Me Jeeg” and “Freaks vs. the Reich,” in his latest work “shows impressive command of...

Early Tuesday morning, the Venice Film Festival announced the lineup for its 82nd edition featuring a range of films set to make waves internationally the rest of the year. While many of the competition titles were predicted by IndieWire and others ahead of the official announcement on the morning of July 22, the overall list of films and filmmakers in attendance still offered plenty of surprises.

Below, we dive into what stood out about the lineup, whether it was which films and studios are not participating this time around, to the ways in which this group of Venice entries differs from the ones from last year.

No Warner Bros. Pictures

While there are other studios that are not taking some expected features to Venice, like Focus Features with “Hamnet” or Sony with “Klara and the Sun,” the studio most noticeably absent from any part of the Venice schedule is Warner Bros.

It's going to be a smashing time in Venice this year. The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 82nd edition and the annual event will serve as the launching pad for Dwayne Johnson's Oscar campaign. The WWE star-turned-leading man plans to be front and center on the Lido with the competition entry The Smashing Machine from director Benny Safdie. Based on the life of Mma fighter Mark Kerr, the film reunites Johnson with his Jungle Cruise costar, Emily Blunt, and hopes to succeed in the awards race where A24's last sports picture — 2023's The Iron Claw — fell short.

But Johnson is stepping into the ring with some heavy-hitters in the Best Actor race, including George Clooney and Oscar Isaac. Both stars will be in Venice for their respective Netflix productions, Jay Kelly and Frankenstein, which hail from directors with proven awards track records. Clooney...

Oscar season starts here.

With its 2025 line-up, announced Tuesday, the Venice Film Festival has (again) taken the award season pole position, with a program packed with a frankly absurd number of must-see movies.

Among the hot awards titles 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, will premiere out of competition; and Guillermo del Toro’s dark reimagining of Frankenstein, featuring Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth, a Netflix production.

This will mark the Venice festival debut for both Roberts and Johnson.

Netflix, which sat out Vence last year, is back in force for 2025. Alongside Frankenstein, the streamer has Noah Baumbach’s comedy‑drama Jay Kelly,...

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera has unveiled a rich mix of buzzy movies with big stars — as well as smaller titles with awards potential — that will be vying for the Golden Lion during the event’s upcoming 82nd edition.

Hotly anticipated new works from Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo Del Toro, Noah Baumbach, Mona Fastvold, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Olivier Assayas, Park Chan-wook, Benny Safdie and more are set for Lido launches, making for a cornucopia of cinematic offerings.

As anticipated by Variety, big-name films premiering at Venice include Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” from A24, featuring Dwayne Johnson as two-time UFC heavyweight champ Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife Dawn; Focus Features’ “Bugonia,” the latest collaboration between Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, who were last at the fest in 2023 with the Oscar-winning “Poor Things”; and Luca Guadagnino’s psychological drama “After the Hunt” starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri.

First still released from Paolo Sorrentino's La Grazia, which will open Venice Film Festival and play in competition Photo: Andrea Pirrello/Mubi Paolo Sorrentino's La Grazia has been announced as the opening film of the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Paulo Sorrentino, who has a long association with Venice, since his feature debut One Man Up played there in 2001 Photo: Michael Avedon The latest film from the Oscar-winning writer/director - the plot of which has not yet been released - sees Sorrentino reteam with The Great Beauty and The Hand Of God star Toni Servillo, who will appear alongside Anna Ferzetti (Diamonds).

Venice's artistic director Alberto Barbera said: "I am very happy that the 82nd Venice International Film Festival will open with the new and highly anticipated film by Paolo Sorrentino. I like to recall that one of the most important and internationally acclaimed Italian auteurs made his debut...

La Grazia, the latest feature from Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, will open the Venice Film Festival.

The film stars Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti will have its world premiere screening on Wednesday, 27 August in the Sala Grande.

La Grazia, written and directed by Sorrentino. Very little about the film’s plot is known, but sources close to the film have told Deadline that the film follows the final days of a fictional Italian Presidency.

The feature is a Fremantle film produced by The Apartment, Numero 10, and PiperFilm, which will distribute in Italy. Mubi owns worldwide rights, excluding Italy. The Match Factory is handling international sales.

“I am very happy that the 82nd Venice International Film Festival will open with the new and highly anticipated film by Paolo Sorrentino,” Venice head Alberto Barbera said in a statement, adding that Sorrentino’s career began at Venice in 2001 with first feature One Man Up.

Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia,” a love story that re-teams the Oscar-winning director with “The Great Beauty” actor Toni Servillo, has been set as opening film of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

“La Grazia” – the title can be translated in English as “Grace” – will be launching from the Lido in competition.

Servillo stars in “La Grazia” opposite Italian actor Anna Ferzetti, who recently appeared in Ferzan Ozpetek’s smash hit “Diamonds.” Plot details of Sorrentino’s new film are being kept under wraps besides the fact that it is a love story set somewhere in Italy.

“La Grazia” will mark Servillo’s seventh collaboration with Sorrentino who has shot 10 feature films to date. They first teamed up in Sorrentino’s dazzling 2001 debut, “One Man Up” in which Servillo played an ageing cocaine-addicted crooner. Servillo is best known to international audiences for his memorable turn as Roman writer and socialite Jep...

Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone are among the rich roster of stars featured in hotly anticipated new movies expected to be launching from Venice Film Festival.

With one month to go until the Lido lineup is unveiled, Venice’s artistic director Alberto Barbera is racing against the clock to assemble the festival’s 82nd edition, slots for which are still in flux. But what’s clear is that there will be no shortage of the type of buzzy titles that make Venice a prime awards season driver.

Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” featuring Dwayne Johnson as two-time UFC heavyweight champ Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife Dawn; Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo-themed thriller “After the Hunt” starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri; and “Bugonia,” the latest collaboration between Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone — who were last...

Exclusive: Artistry, a leading Below the Line agency in Hollywood, has brought on veteran agent Dan Burnside as a partner and co-head of the agency’s Feature and Television department in the company’s Los Angeles office.

Burnside moves to Artistry after 25 years at Dda, bringing with him longtime clients Amy Vincent, ASC, Mike Berlucchi, Jon Joffin, ASC, David Stockton, ASC, Eve McCarney & Anastasia Masaro (Production Designers) and Nadine Haders (Costume Designer).

“We are excited to have Dan join the Artistry team since he brings a wealth of experience and a sharp creative vision,” said partners Gregg Dallesandro and Robin Sheldon. “We know his enthusiasm and creative insight align perfectly with our vision. Dan will be a key player in the growth and evolution of Artistry as the entertainment landscape continues to change.”

Artistry clients include three-time Oscar-nominated editor and Eddie winner Jay Cassidy, Ace,, Oscar-nominated production designer Craig Lathrop (Nosferatu) and cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, six-time winner of the David di Donatello award and Emmy-nominated for The Young Pope.

The company recently had nine clients with films debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, including cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt (The Mastermind).

Artistry has been in existence for over 30 years with Oscar, Emmy and Guild-nominated and award-winning clients spanning cinematography, production design, costume design, and editing.

Andor Season 2 switched directors every three episodes, but the same wasn’t true of its cinematographers. Christophe Nuyens photographed the first six episodes of the 12-part season, including both the action-packed opening arc and the subsequent introduction of the planet Ghorman.

On Andor, director of photography is not a simple job. Nuyens had to do a lot over the course of his six episodes, from filming action scenes (like Diego Luna’s titular protagonist saving his friends from stormtroopers in a stolen Tie fighter) to figuring out the visual aesthetics for new planets like Ghorman.

“The nice thing is that Episodes 1, 2, and 3 were more like a classic Star Wars arc,” Nuyens tells Gold Derby, “while Episodes 4, 5, and 6 show the more human side of the story. On Ghorman, it feels more like a spy movie. It was really nice to work on both of those. We really tried to give each...

Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival (August 15-22).

The festival is also screening a retrospective of Sorrentino’s works, which includes the Oscar-nominated Hand Of God, as part of the ‘Tribute To’ programme.

Sorrentino will attend Sarajevo to receive the award and deliver a masterclass.

The filmmaker’s career has seen him represent Italy at the Oscars several times, including 2014’s winner The Great Beauty which also picked up the Golden Globe and Bafta award for best foreign language film.

Sorrentino’s other credits include the 2008 Cannes jury prize winner Il Divo,...

Paolo Sorrentino is set to be awarded an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at this year’s upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival. A retrospective of his films will be shown during the 31st edition of the festival as part of its ‘Tribute To’ program and the Italian filmmaker will also hold a masterclass during the festival, where he’ll share his thoughts on contemporary art.

Born in Naples in 1970, Sorrentino’s credits include The Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, which both competed for the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2004 and 2006 respectively, while his film Il Divo won the Jury Prize in 2008. He returned In Competition at Cannes in 2011 with This Must Be the Place and two years later with The Great Beauty, which won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as three European Film Awards.

He’s...

Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino is this year’s recipient of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award to be bestowed upon him during the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, which will also feature a retrospective of his films that will be screened as part of the fest’s “tribute to” program.

The honor and tribute will be “in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of cinema,” Sarajevo fest organizers said on Tuesday. Sorrentino will also hold a masterclass and “share his thoughts on contemporary art in a conversation with the audience,” they noted.

“I am deeply honored to receive this prestigious recognition and grateful for the attention given to my filmography,” said Sorrentino. “I look forward to being with you in Sarajevo. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The fest highlighted the effect the Italian director and screenwriter’s oeuvre has had on audiences. “Paolo...

Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino will be this year’s recipient of the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award and a retrospective of his films will be shown as part of the festival’s “Tribute To” program.

Sorrentino will also hold a Masterclass and share his thoughts on contemporary art in a conversation with the audience.

The award is in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to the art of cinema.”

Jovan Marjanović, director of the festival, said: “Paolo Sorrentino managed to do what every filmmaker dreams of – he left a global impact through local, personal stories. With visually luxurious, emotionally filled and intellectually insightful style, he won the hearts of audiences around the world, who saw his characters, no matter how eccentric or withdrawn, as a mirror of our world, often absurd, sometimes cruel, but always deeply human. The Honorary Heart of Sarajevo is a recognition of the...

Paternal Leave director/screenwriter Alissa Jung with Anne-Katrin Titze on Luca Marinelli as Paolo: “Luca's performance gave me the opportunity to really dive in …”

Alissa Jung’s perceptive and compelling Paternal Leave (a highlight of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema) stars fantastic newcomer Juli Grabenhenrich and the wonderful Luca Marinelli (of Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden and Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty) with Arturo Gabbriellini (from Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are), Gaia Rinaldi, and Joy Falletti Cardillo. Other films not to be missed include the Opening Night selection, Francesca Comencini’s The Time It Takes (Il Tempo Che Ci Vuole) with Anna Mangiocavallo and Fabrizio Gifuni; Sara Fgaier’s Weightless (Sulla Terra Leggeri) with Andrea Renzi and Sara Serraiocco (Lamberto Sanfelice's Chlorine); Ferzan Özpetek’s Diamonds (Diamanti), a celebration of movie costume design, with Luisa Ranieri and...

Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid has never shied away from the violence of his homeland, directing a handful of dramas — Policeman, The Kindergarten Teacher, Synonyms and Ahed’s Knee — where characters face explosive situations both externally and within, pursued by a relentless camera targeting their every move. His movies are deeply political, but also poetic and personal, eschewing traditional storytelling for an expressionistic approach marked by bravura stylistics, inner turmoil and the occasional musical number.

If Ahed’s Knee, which came out in 2021, was already a furious cri de coeur against the powers-that-be in Israel, the director’s latest feature, Yes (Ken), takes that premise to the next level. Focusing on a young couple, Y. (Ariel Bronz) and Yasmin (Erfat Dor), who sell their bodies and souls to the highest bidders, the film is deliberately in-your-face and outrageously decadent, assaulting the senses as it blatantly depicts acts of physical and psychological self-destruction.

Mubi has picked up La Grazia from writer and director Paolo Sorrentino ahead of a spring 2025 shoot in Italy for the love story.

The streamer nabbed the worldwide rights, excluding Italy, and will retain all rights in North America, Latin America, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Benelux, Spain, Turkey, India, Australia and New Zealand.

“Paolo Sorrentino has always been a master of cinematic poetry, but La Grazia is something truly special—profound, melancholic, and wickedly sharp in its contemplation of power, influence, and the weight of history—all told with Sorrentino’s singular elegance and wit. We at Mubi are honored to be the home for this film and cannot wait to share its brilliance with audiences worldwide,” Efe Cakarel, founder and CEO of Mubi, said in a statement on Thursday.

The streamer also plans a theatrical release for La Grazia, which stars Toni Servillo, Sorrentino’s go-to actor after earlier...

Mubi has acquired worldwide rights excluding Italy for Paolo Sorrentino’s upcoming La Grazia starring Toni Servillo, which will begin production this spring in Italy.

Mubi will retain all rights in North America, Latin America, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Benelux, Spain, Turkey, India, Australia and New Zealand, with theatrical releases planned. The Match Factory will sell the remaining territories.

Efe Cakarel, founder and CEO of Mubi, said the project is “wickedly sharp in its contemplation of power, influence, and the weight of history”.

Sorrentino’s previous films include Parthenope and The Great Beauty, and La Grazia is his seventh collaboration with Servillo.

“The Substance” distributor Mubi is pursuing its buying spree with another anticipated film from an internationally celebrated auteur, Paolo Sorrentino.

The global distributor, streaming service and production company has bought Sorrrentino’s next movie “La Grazia” for worldwide rights excluding Italy and will retain all rights in North America, Latin America, the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Benelux, Spain, Turkey, India, Australia and New Zealand, with theatrical release plans to be announced in the coming months. The Match Factory will sell the remaining territories.

A love story, the exact plot of which remains under wraps, “La Grazia” marks Sorrentino’s follow up to “Parthenope” which launched from Cannes and scored record-breaking grosses at the Italian box office. “La Grazia,” which translates into English as “Grace,” reteams the Oscar-winning director with “The Great Beauty” actor Toni Servillo.

“La Grazia” was being courted by at least two other major distributors at the European Film Market,...

There are two ways one can perceive Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope. You can either conclude it’s the old man losing his marbles and making an almost two-and-a-half-hour exposition of how the male gaze works. Or it can be taken as a sort of introspection—of life, beauty, and youth. Quite naturally, the appeal of Parthenope depends on how you take it. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll be able to form an opinion about it.

Spoilers Ahead

What Happens In The Movie?

A siren that seduces sailors with her voice—that’s what ‘Perthenope’ means in Greek mythology. Going by that, being born in the waters of picturesque Naples is only fitting for the titular character. She’s named by this old aristocrat named Commander, who eventually jokes about whether Parthenope would have married him if he was forty years younger. Commander sees her affectionately, though,...

“Captain America: Brave New World” director Julius Onah is a proud American, but he’s also a truly international director. Born in Nigeria, a globetrotter through his earliest years, and now based in Berlin, the indie filmmaker behind “Luce” was a bold choice to direct one of Marvel’s biggest tentpoles and bring a new Captain America, Sam Wilson, to the big screen.

But as with any MCU movie, Onah isn’t making a film — even one with “America” in the title — just for an American audience. Since its peak with “Avengers: Endgame,” Marvel has had a tough time trying to regain its former prominence and box office domination, seeing some hits, yes, but definitely some misses. So Onah knew that in getting back there, “Brave New World” needed to be a universal story with ties to all different cultures, especially his own.

Onah grew up in America from a young age,...