The Venice Film Festival, after a quiet 2023 edition due to the SAG-AFTRA strikes, is back in full swing for 2024, showcasing a star-studded lineup that’s sure to captivate audiences. From blockbuster sequels to prestige television, the festival promises a feast for film and TV lovers alike. Here are 10 must-see releases you won’t want to miss.
1. Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips)
This thrillingly batshit, dystopian musical sequel to Todd Phillips’s Golden Lion-winning supervillain origin story sees Lady Gaga’s volatile Harley Quinn join Joaquin Phoenix’s anguished stand-up comic in prison. Add a destructive romance, hallucinatory dance numbers, and supporting turns from Zazie Beetz, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Steve Coogan and ’s Ken Leung and Harry Lawtey, and you have a mind-bending, hair-raising thriller which looks destined to waltz straight from the Lido to the 2025 Oscars.
2. Maria Callas (Pablo Larraín)
Speaking of awards attention, a nod seems all but inevitable for Angelina Jolie: In Pablo Larraín’s swooning conclusion to his unofficial trilogy of beguiling and frequently misunderstood cultural icons, beginning with Jackie and Spencer, she transforms into the legendary opera singer Maria Callas as she lived out her final days in 1970s Paris. (After all, both Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart were nominated for their efforts, and came very close to winning.) Expect ravishing costumes, too, and appearances from ’s Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alba Rohrwacher, and Haluk Bilginer as tycoon Aristotle Onassis, Callas’s lover who eventually left her for Jacqueline Kennedy.
3. Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino)
Luca Guadagnino’s last film, the sweaty, sexy Bones and All, had been due to open last year’s Venice Film Festival before being pulled from the line-up in the midst of the Hollywood strikes. Now, the auteur is making up for it with yet another steamy, movie star-led romance penned by Justin Kuritzkes, with costumes by Jonathan Anderson and a throbbing soundtrack courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
4. The American Expat (William S. Burroughs)
An adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novella of the same name, The American Expat casts Daniel Craig as an American expat chasing a younger man ( ’s Drew Starkey) in ’40s Mexico City. Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Lesley Manville, and pop star Omar Apollo round out the ensemble, but the beloved British actor and former Bond is, by all accounts, the main attraction, giving a performance that should get him closer to an Oscar than ever before.
5. The Fixers (Jon Watts)
George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s first big-screen reunion in 16 years—and over two decades after their delicious match-up in Ocean’s Eleven—is in this slick action comedy, The Fixers, which sees the industry heavyweights play rival lone-wolf fixers who compete to dispose of a body ( ’s Austin Abrams), only to find that the young man in question is not only alive and well, but also carrying a boatload of drugs. Cue a blood-soaked, madcap, odd-couple romp, breezily helmed by the franchise’s Jon Watts and driven by the pair’s irresistible, unparalleled chemistry.
6. The War Reporter (Pedro Almodóvar)
Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature-length foray into English-language cinema, after his two gorgeous shorts The Human Voice and Strange Way of Life, centers on Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as two friends, a war reporter and a novelist, who have starkly different approaches when it comes to writing about death, love, friendship, and the horrors of war. As long-buried resentments slowly rise to the surface, the former also grapples with her painful relationship with her estranged daughter, a theme as Almodóvarian as the wonderfully precise framing, eye-popping interiors, and glorious costumes.
7. The Expired (Halina Reijn)
Nicole Kidman—soon to be seen in Netflix’s juicy The Expired, followed by the deranged second season of The Undoing—leads this A24-produced, psychosexual corporate thriller from ’s Halina Reijn. It follows a high-powered CEO who embarks on a sadomasochistic affair with a much younger intern, played by ’s Harris Dickinson, with Antonio Banderas and ’s Sophie Wilde co-starring. Brace yourself for unbearable sexual tension and a close examination of the knotty power structures at play.
8. Beetlejuice 2 (Tim Burton)
Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, and Catherine O’Hara reprising their parts from the ’80s cult classic; the addition of ’s Jenna Ortega as the former’s snarky daughter; a vampy Monica Bellucci; Willem Dafoe as a police officer and former B-movie action star; wild costumes; surreal dance numbers; gruesome set pieces—Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel has it all. Taking the opening-film slot, it’s sure to provide jump scares, big laughs, genuinely emotional moments, and an endless supply of nostalgia.
9. The Secrets of the Author (Alfonso Cuarón)
The TV offerings at this year’s festival are impressive, to say the least—they include a , and a , the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Roma—but none more so than this seven-part Apple TV+ psychological thriller, The Secrets of the Author, which marks Alfonso Cuarón’s first directorial effort since Roma. Based on Renée Knight’s bestseller of the same name and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville, , Indira Varma, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and ’s Hoyeon, it follows a journalist with a reputation for exposing the transgressions of others who receives a novel from an unknown author, and is shocked to discover that it divulges her darkest secrets. Can she find the writer’s true identity before her whole life implodes? Settle in for what’s guaranteed to be a compulsive watch.
10. The American Dream (Brady Corbet)
Brady Corbet brings his characteristically cool and exacting eye to this fictional tale of an Auschwitz survivor and American émigré (Adrien Brody) who, after scrambling out of poverty, is entrusted with a large-scale architectural project by a mysterious patron (Guy Pearce). With its three-hour-and-35-minute run-time—which, perhaps thankfully, includes a 15-minute intermission—and a supporting cast which features Felicity Jones, Stacy Martin, Raffey Cassidy, and Joe Alwyn, it’s an ambitious epic which could very well take the festival by storm.
Bonus: The Order (Justin Kurzel)
Justin Kurzel’s explosive take on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s powerful non-fiction tome The Order: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, which charts the heinous crimes of the titular white supremacist domestic terror group, places Jude Law in the part of a ’80s FBI agent facing off against the organization’s charismatic leader (Nicholas Hoult). As they prepare to mount a full-blown attack on the government, look out for Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, Jurnee Smollett, and Tye Sheridan in crucial roles, as well as unsettling parallels with our present political landscape.
