Venice Opens With Star Power Flags Hype and Gender Representation

The Venice Film Festival enters its 82nd edition with a carefully curated mix of high-profile premieres and art-house ambitions, rolled out along the Lido’s sun-washed promenades. World-class stars are set to arrive by water taxi for a program that includes Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Emma Stone, Jude Law and many others, while the lineup features both blockbuster potential and smaller, issue-driven works. At the same time, festival leadership cautions that a deluge of buzzy titles raises the risk of disappointment and acknowledges ongoing questions about gender representation and the economic realities of festival life.

Opening the festival is a love story from Paolo Sorrentino, paired with a competition slate that blends international prestige with contemporary resonance. The week will also showcase big-name authors such as Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, Gus Van Sant and Park Chan-wook, returning to Venice alongside newer voices. Among the titles drawing attention are Oliiver Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, in which Jude Law embodies Vladimir Putin, and Kaouther Ben Hanias’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, a Gaza-set drama that uses authentic audio from a...