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Source: Variety
When it comes to major film festivals that take place in Europe, there are a small handful that are considered to be the most prestigious of them all. These three European film festivals, collectively known as the Big Three, are the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, the Berlin Film in Berlin, Germany, and the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy. The latter is well known for being one of the world’s oldest ongoing festivals, first started in 1932, and in recent years has introduced several different films that have gone on to great awards success. Some of these films aren’t all that conventional either; at the 2019 festival, its highest honor – the Golden Lion – was given to the comic book adaptation “Joker”. Needless to say, the Venice Film Festival has become quite useful for filmmakers and studios to get their works out into the public consciousness and hopefully use that attention to achieve greater long-term success. This year’s event seems to be no different from those of the past; set to take place between August 31st and September 10th this year, the Venice Film Festival is currently expected to showcase and premiere a wide variety of exceptional feature-length and short films. Given how renowned the festival continues to be, one would expect that this year’s event will open with a film that is highly anticipated and expected to be among the best of the best. Fortunately, the 2022 Venice Film Festival will indeed open with such a film, that being Noah Baumbach’s latest cinematic endeavor, the black comedy “White Noise”.
Featuring a cast that contains the likes of Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Kodi Smit-McPhee as its leads, Baumbach’s film is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name, one in which Drive plays a Middle American college professor who faces difficulty in navigating the ups and downs that come with his marriage to his fourth wife (played by Gerwig) and their children, a dilemma that is only further complicated when an “airborne toxic event” puts all their lives at risk. In addition to those previously mentioned, the film will also showcase the acting talents of Andre L. Benjamin, Raffey Cassidy, Don Cheadle, Lars Eidinger, and Alessandro Nivola.
Noah Baumbach is no stranger to the Venice Film Festival, as his previous film “Marriage Story” also played at the festival in 2019. This will be the first time one of his works has opened the event though, and it’s also the first time that a film distributed by streaming giant Netflix (which also distributed “Marriage Story”) will open the festival. Sure enough, Netflix is attached to quite a few films expected to be screened at this year’s event; the Marilyn Monroe biopic drama “Blonde”, starring Ana de Armas and directed by Andrew Dominik, is among the more notable, but there’s also a decent number of international releases that Netflix plans to distribute worldwide. These include “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” from Academy Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu (who received consecutive Best Director wins for “Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” and “The Revenant”), which depicts the existential crisis of a Mexican journalist/documentary filmmaker; and the modern tragedy “Athena”, directed by Romain Gavras of “The World is Yours” fame and written by Gavras and Ladj Ly (who previously helmed “Les Miserables”).
Although Netflix has been more than happy to have its films shown at any number of major film festivals, the Venice Film Festival in particular allows for something that cannot be achieved at the Cannes Film Festival: the ability to release these films onto streaming a short time after their festival run. According to French law, any film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival must have a theatrical run in France and can only be released to streaming after a fifteen-month waiting period. Considering Netflix’s business model requires them to release whatever films they have onto streaming as soon as possible, having to wait at least fifteen months is clearly not an option, so it’s had to pull films from competition, if not the entirety of the Cannes Film Festival, in order to avoid having to adhere to this mandate. No such mandate, however, exists at the Venice Film Festival, so Netflix has understandably been more eager to allow its films to compete at this particular event.
In a statement released to announce “White Noise” as the opening film of this year’s event, festival director Alberto Barbera seemed particularly excited about this decision, calling it a “great honor” and adding that ensuring the film was finished before making the announcement (which many had expected to come out sooner than it actually did) was well worth the wait. In his statement, Barbera praised Baumbach’s film and its success in adapting DeLillo’s work, calling it “an original, ambitious and compelling piece of art which plays with measure on multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical,” while also praising the film’s ability to draw parallels between the obsessions and fears of the 1980s to those of today’s day and age. Baumbach seems to have been delighted by the festival’s decision, if his immediate response is any indication. “It is a truly wonderful thing to return to the Venice Film Festival, and an incredible honor to have ‘White Noise’ play as the opening night film,” Baumbach stated in response to the announcement. “This is a place that loves cinema so much, and it’s a thrill and a privilege to join the amazing films and filmmakers that have premiered here.”
“White Noise” is far from the only major release that many are looking forward to at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Other highly anticipated films expected to be screened include Warner Brothers’ psychological thriller “Don’t Worry Darling”, directed by Olivia Wilde; Focus Features’ “Tár” from director Todd Field; MGM’s “Bones and All”, directed by Luca Guadagnino; Searchlight Pictures’ “The Banshees of Inisherin” from director Martin McDonagh; and A24’s “The Whale”, directed by Darren Aronofsky. These are all only a fraction of what Venice has to offer this year though, and one can’t help but be excited for what else there is to be seen.
