‘Joker’ Sequel Included in Venice Film Festival Lineup

[Pelican Press 0]

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‘Joker’ Sequel Included in Venice Film Festival Lineup

“

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,” Todd Phillips’s comic-book sequel starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, will compete for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice International Film Festival.

The movie’s participation, which festival organizers announced during a news conference on Tuesday to reveal the lineup, comes five years after Phillips’s “Joker” — which told the Batman villain’s origin story — won the same prize at Venice’s 76th edition, paving the way for its two Oscar wins.

Phillips’s movie will face starry competition for the Golden Lion, including from Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” a biopic of the opera singer Maria Callas with Angelina Jolie in the lead.

Also in competition will be Luca Guadagnino’s “******,” an adaptation of a short novel by William S. Burroughs that follows a ***** ******* (Daniel Craig) as he undergoes withdrawal in Mexico City and becomes infatuated with an ********* drifter (Drew Starkey); Halina Reijn’s ******* thriller “Babygirl” starring Nicole Kidman as a manager who starts an affair; and Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” with Jude Law as an F.B.I. agent investigating a white supremacist ********** organization.

Altogether, 21 movies will compete for the top prize at Venice’s 81st edition, which is scheduled to run Aug. 28 through Sep. 7. A nine-person jury led by Isabelle Huppert, the French actor, will choose the Golden Lion winner, which is announced on the festival’s final day.

This year’s star-studded lineup suggests the impact of last year’s Hollywood strikes on the movie industry’s schedules is waning. Those strikes wrought havoc at last year’s festival, with the MGM studio pulling Guadagnino’s tennis drama “Challengers” from the lineup, and many actors and directors staying away to avoid breaking strike terms.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said that “

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” showed Phoenix’s and Lady Gaga’s characters stuck in an asylum awaiting trial.

“Nobody can imagine what Todd and his screenwriters have imagined,” Barbera said, adding that Phoenix’s performance was “incredible.”

Venice’s organizers had announced some of this year’s lineup before Tuesday’s news conference, including this year’s opening movie, which won’t compete for the Golden Lion: “

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,” Tim Burton’s sequel to his 1988 comedy horror. The new movie has Michael Keaton return to play the title role, and also stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara.

Another high-profile movie appearing out of competition is Jon Watts’s comedic thriller “

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,” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as professional fixers who are hired to cover up the same ******. There are also movies by directors less familiar to Western audiences, including the ********* director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with “

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,” and the Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who is showing “April.”

In recent years, the Venice Film Festival has gained a reputation for debuting Oscar contenders. Last year, Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, won the Golden Lion for best film and Stone went on to win best actress at this year’s Academy Awards.

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