The Venice Film Fes­ti­val unveils a jam-packed line­up for 2022

While cinephiles the globe over sweat their way through a mis­er­able plan­e­tary heat wave, the thought of fall’s arrival is on everyone’s mind, both for rea­sons of declin­ing tem­per­a­tures and the annu­al gear­ing-up of the fes­ti­val sea­son. This morn­ing, the direc­tors of the Venice Film Fes­ti­val made it all feel just with­in reach with their announce­ment of the full pro­gram­ming slate for 2022’s pro­ceed­ings — the most robust, star-stud­ded line­up since the pan­dem­ic put a damper on fes­ti­vals in general.

Some of the big ones, we’d come to expect from rumors over the past few weeks, most of which con­cerned late-in-the-year offer­ings from Net­flix. Cannes’ vocal­ly stat­ed oppo­si­tion to the stream­ing bar­bar­ians at the gates means that Venice is free to snatch up such major-league titles as Andrew Dominik​‘s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe biopic Blonde, Ale­jan­dro Gon­za­lez Iñár­ritu​‘s jour­nal­ism com­e­dy Bar­do or False Chron­i­cle of a Hand­ful of Truths, Noah Baum­bach​‘s Don DeLil­lo adap­ta­tion White Noise, and Romain Gavras‘ polit­i­cal pow­der keg Athena. The prin­ci­ple moti­vat­ing Cannes’ Net­flix ban is clear, but in prac­tice, it’s become impos­si­ble to deny that they’re hand­i­cap­ping them­selves and leav­ing some prime pick­ings to their biggest competitor.

Between scut­tle­butt and the telling roll­out of trail­ers, a hand­ful of oth­ers con­firmed this morn­ing were already smart-mon­ey bets: Todd Field​‘s music-world dra­ma Tár, Luca Guadagni­no​‘s can­ni­bal romance Bones and All, Dar­ren Aronof­sky​‘s psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait The Whale, and Mar­tin McDon­agh​‘s wind-swept char­ac­ter piece The Ban­shees of Inish­erin. But the stuffed Com­pe­ti­tion selec­tion also includes a hand­ful of true sur­pris­es, includ­ing Fred­er­ick Wise­man​‘s first fic­tion film in decades, Flo­ri­an Zeller​‘s fol­low-up to The Father (titled, log­i­cal­ly, The Son), the lat­est por­trait of con­flict­ed wom­an­hood from Joan­na Hogg, a new fea­ture from the recent­ly impris­oned Jafar Panahi, and a mys­tery doc­u­men­tary from Lau­ra Poitras — word is it chron­i­cles activist Nan Goldin’s one-woman war against the Sack­ler fam­i­ly of phar­ma barons and muse­um donors.

And that’s just the Com­pe­ti­tion; the Venice pro­gram­mers have lined up an addi­tion­al wave of A‑listers for their Out of Com­pe­ti­tion sec­tion, which com­pris­es fea­tures, shorts, and series alike. That last cat­e­go­ry will host new work from Lars Von Tri­er, as he resumes his hos­pi­tal-set series The King­dom with a new install­ment titled ​“Riget Exo­dus,” and Nico­las Wind­ing Refn, whose neo-noir Copen­hagen Cow­boy will arrive on Net­flix lat­er this year. As for fea­tures, we’ve got a new some­thing from Lav Diaz — the run time for the famous­ly unhur­ried film­mak­er has yet to be revealed, but it’s hope­ful­ly no short­er than four hours — as well as Wal­ter Hill and Paul Schrad­er. Olivia Wilde will pull back the cur­tain on her enig­mat­ic Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling, while the late (and now some­what less-esteemed, upon the rev­e­la­tion of sex­u­al assault accu­sa­tions against him) Kim Ki-duk will also make his final appear­ance in the programme.

With this year’s stag­ger­ing col­lec­tion of big names, Venice seems to have pulled away from the Euro-pres­tige pack, in light of a pal­tri­er Cannes than most years and Berlin’s tac­it res­o­lu­tion to explore obscur­er cor­ners of the world­wide art­house. The soon-to-be-announced Toron­to and Tel­luride have their work cut out for them, mea­sur­ing up to this bun­dle of pre­mieres, but there’s still lots left unclaimed. My big ques­tion mark: where’s Damien Chazelle​‘s pur­port­ed­ly obscene Old Hol­ly­wood vice-fest Babylon?