The 76 Venice International Film Festival kicks off with The Truth

The 76 Venice International Film Festival kicks off Wednesday with a lineup that includes films starring Brad Pitt (y Ad Astra), Kristen Stewart (Seberg) and Joaquin Phoenix (Joker).

Over 100 films are to be screened at the ceremony taking place from 28th August to 7th September 2019. This year’s jury president is Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, who is a director, screenwriter and producer and whose feature films have frequented Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and many other international film festivals.

According to the organisers, there are 21 films that will compete for the Golden Lion – the highest award of the festival- under the Venezia 76 Competition films. The 21 films are:

1. The Truth (directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda), also the opening film of the festival.
2. The Perfect Candidate – Haifaa Al-Mansour
3. About Endlessness – Roy Andersson
4. Wasp Network – Olivier Assayas
5. Marriage Story – Noah Baumbach
6. Guest of Honor, Atom Egoyan
7. Ad Astra – James Gray
8. A Herdade – Tiago Guedes
9. Gloria Mundi – Robert Guediguian
10. Waiting for the Barbarians – Ciro Guerra
11. Ema – Pablo Larrain
12. Saturday Fiction – Lou Ye
13. Martin Eden – Pietro Marcello
14. The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be – Franco Maresco
15. The Painted Bird – Vaclav Marhoul
16. The Mayor of the Rione Sanità – Mario Martone
17. Babyteeth – Shannon Murphy
18. Joker – Todd Phillips
19. An Officer and a Spy – Roman Polanski
20. The Laundromat – Steven Soderbergh
21. No. 7 Cherry Lane – Yonfan

The festival closing film is the out of competition film titled, The Burnt Orange Heresy by Giuseppe Capotondi.

Tsai Ming-Liang’s film Goodbye, Dragon Inn is the festival’s Special Event film, while there are the usual other categories including:

• Out of Competition – Fiction (6 films)
• Out of Competition – Non-Fiction (9 films)
• Out of Competition – Special Screenings (8 films)
• Venice Classics (20 films)
• Venice Days (12 films)
• Venice College Cinema (4 films)
• Sconfini (4 films)
• Horizons (19 films)

To see the entire titles in the line-up, visit the festival organisers’ website.