The 82nd Venice Film Festival began Wednesday with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s latest work, La Grazia, marking the return of one of Italy’s most acclaimed filmmakers to the prestigious event.
Held on the Lido, the glamorous festival will showcase Hollywood stars including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, as well as celebrated directors such as Guillermo del Toro and Kathryn Bigelow over the next 10 days.
La Grazia stars Sorrentino’s longtime collaborator Toni Servillo, though details of the story have been kept secret. Festival director Alberto Barbera described the film as “a different Sorrentino from what we are used to — far less baroque and formalistic … It’s a very unexpected story.”
Sorrentino, who won an Oscar for The Great Beauty, first premiered at Venice 24 years ago with One Man Up and later earned the Silver Lion in 2021 for The Hand of God. Many Venice debuts have gone on to receive Oscar recognition.
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Ahead of the premiere, anti-war activists announced plans to hold a news conference outside the red carpet to highlight the crisis in Gaza.
La Grazia is one of 21 films competing for the Golden Lion, alongside del Toro’s Frankenstein, Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The festival runs through September 6.
Source: Agency