2015 Venice Film festival Line Up

Kristen Stewart, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson are among the stars in movies coming to the world’s oldest major film festival.

The world’s oldest major film festival in Venice, Italy will once again screen films from new and established directors, with 55 new films set for this year's 72nd edition.

Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera and Biennale president Paolo Baratta unveiled this year's star-studded lineup Wednesday morning at the Westin Excelsior Rome hotel. It includes much-buzzed about American films, a slew of Italian talent and various voices from world cinema. 

In the competition section, a number of U.S. titles are part of the lineup, which Barbara called one of the most diverse in festival. Among U.S. directors, the competition features Laurie Anderson's  return to directing with Heart of a Dog, a film about loss, Cary Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba as a warlord in the film about child soldiers in Africa, which Netflix bought global rights to for a reported $12 million. 

Also in the competition, Duke Johnson and Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman's animated film Anomalisa, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan, is not for kids. Centered around the crisis of the middle-aged man, the film was partially funded by Kickstarter.   


Tom Hooper’s 1920s drama The Danish Girl is also among the awards season contenders in the Venice competition. It stars Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo a sex change after his wife Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) began painting him as a woman. 

Drake Doremus' futurisitic love story Equals, starring Kristen Stewart, Jacki Weaver and Guy Pearce, will also compete for Venice's Golden Lion award as will Canadian director Atom Egoyan's thriller Rembember, starring Dean Norris and Christopher Plummer. 

Marco Bellocchio comes to Venice with Sangue del mio sangue, Piero Messina with L'attesa, Giuseppe Gaudino with Per amor vostro, and Luca Guadagnino with A Bigger Splash starring Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson. 

Notable among the Out-Of-Competition titles beyond Everest, Black Mass andSpotlight is Daniel Alfredson’s Go With Me. A thriller set in the Pacific Northwest, it stars Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles and Ray Liotta. And, in what might just be a first for a major festival,Martin Scorsese’s 16-minute short, The Audition, is taking a vaporetto to the main stage. It’s actually a promotional film he made for a pair of casinos in Asia and features Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brad Pitt.

Venice has a strong penchant for documentaries — one won the Golden Lion a few years ago — and isn’t skimping on them this time. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow will be in town with their De Palma, while Amy Berg’s Janis also has a slot, and Frederick Wiseman returns with In Jackson Heights.

The Horizons sidebar, a competitive section that runs parallel, features buzzed about The Childhood Of A Leader from Deadline 2014 actor/director to watch Brady Corbet and starring Robert Pattinson and Bérénice Bejo. Also one to keep an eye on is A Hijacking helmer Tobias Lindholm’s A War. The Danish drama from The Hunt and Borgen scripter follows an officer who is put on trial upon his return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Magnolia boarded domestic early.

The fest’s main jury, headed by Alfonso Cuaron, comprises Elizabeth Banks and Diane Kruger alongside Turkish auteur and 2014 Palme d’Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski, the director of Oscar winner “Ida”; French author, screenwriter and director Emmanuel Carrere; Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who won best director at Cannes this year for “The Assassin”; Italian director Francesco Munzi (“Black Souls”); and British director and screenwriter Lynne Ramsay (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”).

Fest will run Sept. 2-12

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL — IN COMPETITION
“Frenzy,” Emin Alper (Turkey, France, Qatar)
“Heart of a Dog,” Laurie Anderson (U.S.)
“Blood of My Blood,” Marco Bellocchio (Italy)
“Looking for Grace,” Sue Brooks (Australia)
“Equals,” Drake Doremus (U.S.)
“Remember,” Atom Egoyan (Canada, Germany)
“Beasts of No Nation,” Cary Fukunaga (U.S.)
“Per amor vostro,” Giuseppe M. Gaudino (Italy, France)
“Marguerite,” Xavier Giannoli (France, Czech Republic, Belgium)
“Rabin, the Last Day,” Amos Gitai (Isreal, France)
“A Bigger Splash,” Luca Guadagnino (Italy, France)
“The Endless River,” Oliver Hermanus (South Africa, France)
“The Danish Girl,” Tom Hooper (U.K., U.S.)
“Anomalisa,” Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson (U.S.)
“L’attesa,” Piero Messina (Italy)
“11 minutes,” Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland)
“Francofonia,” Aleksander Sokurov (France, Germany, Netherlands)
“The Clan,” Pablo Trapero (Argentina, Spain)
“Desde alla,” Lorenzo Vigas (Venezuela, Mexico)
“L’hermine,” Christian Vincent (France)
“Behemoth,” Zhao Liang (China, France)

OUT OF COMPETITION
“Everest,” Baltasar Kormakur (U.S., U.K.) – Opening Film
“Mr. Six,” Hu Guan (China) – Closing Film

FICTION
“Go With Me,” Daniel Alfredson (U.S., Canada, Sweden)
“Non essere cattivo,” Claudio Caligari (Italy)
“Black Mass,” Scott Cooper (U.S.)
“Spotlight,” Thomas McCarthy (U.S.)
“La calle de la Amargura,” Mexico Spain
“The Audition,” Martin Scorsese (U.S.)

NON-FICTION
“Winter on Fire,” Evgeny Afineevsky (Ukraine)
“De Palma,” Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow (U.S.)
“Janis,” Amy Berg (U.S.)
“The Event,” Sergei Loznitsa (Netherlands, Belgium)
“Gli uomini di questa città io non li conosco,” Franco Maresco (Italy)
“L’esercito piu piccolo del mondo,” Gianfranco Pannone (Vatican City State)
“Afternoon,” Tsai Ming-liang (Chinese Taipei)
“In Jackson Heights,” Frederick Wiseman (U.S.)

SPECIAL SCREENING
“Human,” Yann Arthus-Bertrand (France)

GOLDEN LION FOR CAREER ACHIEVEMENT
“La vie et rien d’autre,” Betrand Tavernier

HORIZONS
“Madame Courage,” Merzak Allouache (Algeria, France, U.A.E.)
“A Copy of My Mind,” Joko Anwar (Indonesia, South Korea)
“Pecore in erba,” Alberto Caviglia (Italy)
“Tempete,” Samuel Collardey (France)
The Childhood of a Leader,” Brady Corbet (U.K., Hungary, Belgium, France)
“Italian Gangster,” Renato De Maria (Italy)
“Wednesday, May 9,” Vahid Jalilvand, Iran
“Mountain,” Yaelle Kayam (Israel)
“A War,” Tobias Lindholm (Denmark)
“Interrogation,” Vetri Maaran (India)
“Free in Deed,” Jake Mahaffy (U.S., New Zealand)
“Boi Neon,” Gabriel Mascaro (Brazil, Uruguay, Netherlands)
“Man Down,” Dito Montiel (U.S.)
“Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?,” Hadar Morag (Israel, France)
“Un monstruo de mil cabezas,” Rodrigo Pla (Mexico)
“Mate-me por favor,” Anita Rocha Da Silveira (Brazil, Argentina)
“Taj Mahal,” Nicolas Saada (France, Belgium)
“Interruption,” Yorgos Zois (Greece, France, Croatia)