However you slice or strategize it, the 2025 Venice Film Festival (8.27 through 9.6) will likely constitute a much richer assortment of films than the Cannes Film Festival, which unfurls three and half weeks hence. Here’s a list of 2025 films that are somewhere between fairly and somewhat likely choices for the Venice gathering.
HE’s dream roster includes the Guadagnino, the Bigelow, the Cooper, the Nemes, the Aronofsky, the Berger, the Cianfrance, the Corbijn, the Greengrass, the Baumbach, the Assayas, the Schnabel and the Gibney…13 in all.
Not the Safdie, not the Lanthimos, not the Zhao, not the Fastvold, not the Winocour.
1. AFTER THE HUNT / d: Luca Guadagnino
2. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER / d: Paul Thomas Anderson
3. UNTITLED WHITE HOUSE INCOMING MISSILE THRILLER / d: Kathryn Bigelow
4. JAY KELLY / d: Noah Baumbach
5. CAUGHT STEALING / d: Darren Aronofsky
6. BUGONIA / d: Yorgos Lanthimos
7. THE SMASHING MACHINE / d: Benny Safdie
8. THE LOST BUS / d: Paul Greengrass
9. HAMNET / d: Chloe Zhao
10. THE BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER / d: Edward Berger
11. FRANKENSTEIN / d: Guillermo del Toro
12. ROOFMAN / d: Derek Cianfrance
13. DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE / d: Scott Cooper
14. SWITZERLAND / d: Anton Corbijn
15. MUSK / d: Alex Gibney (d0c)
16. SACRIFICE / d: Romain Gavras
17, IN THE HAND OF DANTE / d: Julian Schnabel
18. ANN LEE / d: Mona Fastvold
19. NO OTHER CHOICE / d: Park Chan-wook
20. THE CRY OF THE GUARDS / d: Claire Denis
21. WIZARD OF KREMLIN / d: Olivier Assayas (a film adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli‘s 2022 book, directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Zach Galifianakis and Tom Sturridge with Dano playing Vadim Baranov.)
22. COUTURE / d: Alice Winocour
23. ORPHAN / d: Laszlo Nemes
24. CHOCOBAR / d: Lucrecia Martel (doc)
