Venice Film Festival Announces Lineup

The Venice Film Festival has announced the films that will be included in this year’s Festival, which will run August 31 – September 10, according to a report in Variety.

As previously announced, The Ides of March, the film adaptation of Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North, co-written and directed by George Clooney, will open the Festival. The film, which follows a young press spokesman who falls prey to backroom politics, will star Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood.

Among the other films in competition will be Roman Polanski’s Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play, God of Carnage, that will star, as previously reported, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet; William Friedkin’s screen version of Tracy Letts’ play Killer Joe, which features Emile Hirsch, Matthew McConaughey, and Gina Gershon; David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, an adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play about the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud; and Steve McQueen’s Shame, which stars Carey Mulligan.

Among the films that will be part of the Festival, but not in competition, are Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome, which as previously announced, features the filmmaker, Jessica Chastain, and Kevin Anderson; W.E., about the relationships between the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson and an American woman and a Russian security guard, co-written and directed by Madonna and starring Abbie Cornish and Oscar Isaac; and Stephen Soderbergh’s Contagion, with stars Matt Damon and Jude Law.

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