When it comes to the delicate art of composing film music, the Venice Film Festival is – perhaps more than other festivals – an excellent thermometer for measuring the state of the art. The 82nd edition will once again provide the opportunity to listen to the works of some of today’s leading figures in the field (“the one true great contemporary music,” as Nicola Piovani has called it), as well as to discover new talents.
Among the most eagerly awaited and established names is undoubtedly Alexandre Desplat, the first composer ever to chair the Festival’s main Jury in 2014. An extraordinarily eclectic and prolific musician, in demand across the globe, Desplat has already worked with Guillermo del Toro on The Shape of Water (Golden Lion winner in 2017) and Pinocchio (2022), and is now returning to the Lido with Frankenstein. Another star is Danny Elfman, Tim Burton’s pyrotechnic musical alter ego, who also sat on the Lido Jury in 2010 and is now scoring Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire. A more recent but already highly sought-after presence is German composer Volker Bertelmann, better known as Hauschka – Academy Award winner for All Quiet on the Western Front, and author of The Crow and Conclave – a master at bending electronic resources into intense expressive forms. He will be present with Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, while Nicholas Britell, a refined and reserved English musician, appears with Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly.
Also from the UK come Daniel Blumberg, heard last year at the Lido with the score for The Brutalist and now engaged both in Mona Fastvold’s historical musical The Testament of Ann Lee and Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary Sotto le nuvole (Under the Clouds), and Jerskin Fendrix (born
Joscelin Dent-Pooley), a young pop-rooted composer who renews his partnership with Yorgos Lanthimos for the third time with Bugonia, after Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness.
Jim Jarmusch, on the other hand, has chosen to go it alone – direction, screenplay, and music – for his Father Mother Sister Brother. The Festival will also feature one of the most outstanding and stylistically eclectic female composers: Afro-Kuwaiti artist Fatima Al Qadiri (La abuela), invited by François Ozon for L’étranger. Meanwhile, Franco-Tunisian composer Amine Bouhafa (Timbuktu, Gagarin), a master at blending musical cultures, accompanies with his score Kaouther Ben Hania’s harrowing The Voice of Hind Rajab, centered on the tragedies of Gaza.
In a world traversed by light and darkness, a man defies nature to create the unnatural. The Creature is born, and with it, a tragedy. Guillermo del Toro reinterprets Mary Shelley’s masterpiece with the tragic grace of a Miltonian parable: the focus shifts from the act of cr...
February 1977, Indianapolis, offices of a major financial firm. Tony Kiritsis enters with a clear plan: to take revenge on those he blames for his financial ruin, caused by bad advice from people he believes should be punished. Based on a true story, one of the most media-revo...
After an eight-year absence from the screen, the Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker returns to the Venice Competition with a gripping and sharp-edged thriller that intertwines geopolitics, military tension, and moral dilemmas. When a nuclear missile str...
An intimate, generational comedy, laced with irony and tinged with drama, written by Noah Baumbach together with Greta Gerwig. A lightning-fast road movie, unfolding over the course of a single weekend, it proves both surprising and deeply meaningful for two middle-aged friend...
A refined historical musical that tells the story of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), founder of the Shaker movement in the 18th century, a figure venerated as the “Female Christ” by her followers, who practiced prayer, song, and dance as forms of worship. The film follows her j...
A black-and-white portrait of Naples, drawn after three years spent in the city to capture its nuances. Affection, philosophy, irony: Naples is a mosaic of diverse pieces that, when viewed from the right distance, form an irresistible image. Rosi’s gaze extends to Pompeii, H...
Young beekeeper Teddy and his best friend are obsessed with conspiracy theories and convinced of one thing: aliens are among us. Their suspicions fall on Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), powerful CEO of a pharmaceutical giant whom they believe is an alien bent on destroying Earth...
A triptych exploration of relationships between adult children, their distant parents, and siblings. Told in the form of a comedy, the narration is free from judgment, maintaining objectivity while still engaging the viewer emotionally. Set in the United States, Dublin, and Pa...
Algiers, 1938. Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), a quiet and detached clerk, attends his mother’s funeral without showing any emotion. The next day he begins a relationship with Marie (Rebecca Marder), a co-worker, and soon slips back into his daily routine. But when his neighbor...
To recount the dramatic story of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl trapped under a car in Gaza who called the Red Crescent in a one-hour plea for help, the director chose to use the original audio of the call. Completed in just twelve months, the film is set entirely in a sin...
Much anticipation also surrounds the sophisticated hi-tech duo of British Atticus Ross and American Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), collaborating for the fourth time with Luca Guadagnino in After the Hunt. Representing Northern Europe – home to one of the most remarkable schools of film music – is Jeppe Kaas, who scores Anders Thomas Jensen’s The Last Viking.
As for the Italians, keep an eye (and an ear) on Sacha Ricci and Marco Messina (formerly of 99 Posse), joined by Fabrizio Elvetico in their fifth collaboration with Pietro Marcello for the biopic Duse; on Salvatore Bonafede, an unconventional musician – much like his favorite director Franco Maresco – in Un film fatto per Bene; on the innovative Santi Pulvirenti – longtime collaborator of Pif and also very active on TV – for Andrea Di Stefano’s Il maestro; and on the duo Federico Bisozzi–Davide Tomat for Paolo Strippoli’s horror film La valle dei sorrisi (The Valley of Smiles).
So not only good screenings, but also good vibrations!
