Venice Film Festival brings auteurs, daring debuts and unforgettable stories

The summer may be drawing to a close but for the film industry, things are just starting to heat up. Venice Film Festival, now in its 82nd year, is in full swing with a slate of international premieres, including work from renowned directors such as Noah Baumbach, Park Chan-Wook and Guillermo del Toro. As many of the most anticipated films of the Biennale’s lineup have already promised cinematic releases before the year is out, here’s a look at the films coming out of Venice worthy of your attention.

Although the Venice Film Festival has a dark political past, as it was initially created and controlled by the National Fascist Party, today it is home to cinema committed to exploring issues of injustice, even as political motivations vary amongst filmmakers – a fact equally evident in both documentary and fictional programming.

Earlier this year news circulated about Werner Herzog’s next fiction feature, but few were aware that his return to festivals would come this year with a new documentary. Premiering at Venice, Ghost Elephants follows conversationalist Dr. Steve Boyes as he continues his 10 year search for an elusive herd of elephants. While the cinematography exudes mysticism, Herzog’s immediately recognisable accent and frank interview style cuts through, as man and nature are once again in less than harmonious contact.

Herzog is not the only surprise documentary in the lineup as Sofia Coppola, debuts her first in the format. She may be veering from her well trodden territory in feature filmmaking, but Coppola maintains her sense of style and a unique aesthetic eye by choosing fashion designer Marc Jacobs as her focus in biographical documentary Marc.

Documentary is also key for Laura Poitras, who continues to favour the medium that exposes corruption. Since the critical success of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Poitras has turned her gaze from art world activism to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s coverage of the Vietnam, Iraq War and uncovering further atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza. Through Hersch's incredible career, audiences are reminded of the barbaric torture habits of American military, while the documentary explores the failings of the US Press and those that would rather Hersch’s many damning findings never see the light.

As the festival has expanded over the years, it has become a home for many of the world’s renowned auteurs. This summer American society's posturing of individualism and optimisation is under direct scrutiny from many angles this year at Venice, beyond the documentary format. From Yorgos Lanthimos’ comes Bugonia, an absurdist science fiction film focusing on a vengeful beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who becomes convinced a prominent CEO (Emma Stone) is in fact an alien, questioning the hive mind and the deep disparities in the working world.

Meanwhile Benny Safdie’s first solo-foray into cinema, The Smashing Machine, is a biography on UFC fighter Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne the Rock Johnson), prioritising the brutality of the scene over the hagiographic tendencies of the sports drama. And of course Kathryn Bigelow continues her career-long, somewhat controversial, focus on the American military, with her latest political thriller House of Dynamite. As Bigelow returns to the director’s seat after a decade, attendees are curious about her long awaited comeback and what she plans to do with it.

Alongside bold political voices, this year’s Venice film festival offers many recognisable names in the industry making pivotal creative choices, such as Coppola, or branching out on their own like Safdie. With this incredible line-up from contemporary cinema’s leading auteurs, as well as some returning titans at Venice Festival, and the welcome news that there will be no superheroes taking up programming space in cinemas for six months, there is much contextually rich and beautiful filmmaking for cinephiles to look forward to in the coming months.