Inside the 2025 Venice Film Festival: Netflix Domination, Major Star Power, and Massive Surprises

The 2025 Venice Film Festival lineup features a whole lot of one studio that sat out last year’s edition entirely: Netflix. The streamer’s most recent awards season was fueled by pickups of sales titles out of major festivals, from Emilia Pérez at Cannes to Maria at Venice. But this year it will return to the Lido in force with a trio of buzzy in-house productions: Jay Kelly, helmed by Noah Baumbach and starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler; Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro’s take on the iconic Mary Shelley novel; and A House of Dynamite, a starry political thriller shrouded in secrecy and marking the long-awaited return of director Kathryn Bigelow.

Each movie already has forceful word of mouth, and Netflix has been projecting confidence in its slate. The studio is also ramping up the launch for Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger’s follow-up to Conclave, which was announced on Monday as a Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film is expected to first have its world premiere at Telluride, which keeps its lineup a secret until the last minute. Netflix’s well-received fest pickups Train Dreams (Sundance) and Nouvelle Vague (Cannes) are also going to TIFF, as is Frankenstein.

That’s a lot—and it’s just from one studio. Between Venice’s and TIFF’s lineup announcements this week, we have a fuller picture of top studios’ awards strategies going into the fall. This includes the hyped movies seemingly skipping the festival circuit, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.) and Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century). The screening approach in those cases appears to be commercial-first, though Telluride sneaks remain a possibility.

Focus Features will hope to divide and conquer between Venice and Telluride. The Italian festival will host the premiere of Bugonia, the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone and, in what’s said to be a major performance, Jesse Plemons. Meanwhile, Oscar winner Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet will seemingly first hit Telluride before a TIFF gala launch. That drama stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and, in the actual lead role, Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes. Focus, the specialty label of Universal, also has Anemone—marking a highly anticipated return to acting for Daniel Day-Lewis, in a film directed by his son Ronan. It’s slated for an October release, conspicuous since the film remains without a confirmed festival berth.

A24 last year bought its massive Oscar contender, The Brutalist, out of Venice, where it also won best actress for Nicole Kidman in Babygirl. This time around, the studio will head to the Lido with one of the lineup’s most anticipated titles: Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, starring a transformed Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The studio’s other Safdie-brother movie, Josh’s Marty Supreme starring Timothée Chalamet, will likely skip the fests ahead of its Christmas release. Speaking of The Brutalist: Mona Fastvold, that film’s cowriter, will be back in Italy as the director of another gonzo sales title, The Testament of Ann Lee, a musical take on the eponymous founding leader of the Shaker religion that stars Amanda Seyfried. Will it create more fervor among potential buyers? Brutalist director Brady Corbet—Fastvold’s life partner—cowrote and produced this one. It’s going to TIFF too (as is The Smashing Machine).

Most of the aforementioned studios were a bit quieter at Cannes this year, but the Croisette’s top players have also snagged some Venice territory. Neon, which backed the Palme d’Or–winning It Was Just an Accident (which next heads to TIFF and, seemingly, Telluride, along with Neon’s fellow prize winners Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent), will be on the ground with No Other Choice from renowned auteur Park Chan-wook. Mubi’s Father Mother Sister Brother, directed by Jim Jarmusch, had been rumored for Cannes but is instead now locked for Venice.

Reportedly at the request of Amazon MGM Studios, Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt will bow out of competition, despite forceful early word and a sparkling cast led by Julia Roberts. Guadagnino’s Queer met a muted response on the Lido just last year, but he did win best director there for Bones and All in 2022. Another Oscar nominee, Gus Van Sant, will join Guadagnino out of competition with Dead Man’s Wire, a film hoped to be a return to form for the director of Good Will Hunting and Milk. It’s jetting off to Toronto after.

Dead Man’s Wire is one of the many high-profile sales titles now confirmed for an international debut in the next month or two. Venice also has Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, which imagines the collision of a youthful Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) and a brilliant strategist (Paul Dano). Down in the Orizzonti section, we have Kent Jones’s Late Fame, starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee. And TIFF, as ever, is stacked with potential awards players, though it’s just too early to know what will stick—to say nothing of this year’s sluggish acquisitions market (Neon’s Cannes buys notwithstanding).

Could Sydney Sweeney break out as boxer Christy Martin in the eponymous biopic by David Michôd? What’s with all the good word behind Tuner, a twisty character study from Oscar winner Daniel Roher (Navalny) that stars Leo Woodall (expected to hit Telluride before TIFF)? What does Steven Soderbergh have up his sleeve with his third release of the year, The Christophers, led by the fascinating duo of Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel?

Ponder—because we’re just getting started.

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