Festival’s reputation as a predictor of award-winning fare seems set with films from Denis Villeneuve, Jane Campion, Edgar Wright, Paolo Sorrentino and Pedro Almodóvar
Spencer, the much anticipated film about Diana, Princess of Wales, starring Kristen Stewart, is due to receive its world premiere on Friday at the Venice film festival – one of a string of high-profile debuts that the film industry is hoping will herald a return to some sort of normality after 18 months of pandemic.
Along with the near-simultaneous
Toronto film festival, Venice has traditionally marked the end of the summer blockbuster film season and the arrival of films aiming for critical praise and subsequent awards recognition. Spencer is due to be joined at Venice by Dune, the long-gestating adaptation of Frank Herbert’s mammoth sci-fi novel directed by Denis Villeneuve; Ridley Scott’s medieval drama The Last Duel, starring
Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer; horror-thriller Last Night in Soho, directed by Edgar Wright; and Parallel Mothers, the latest from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar.