Venice Film Festival

Latest reviews

• Happyend

  Review preview for Happyend

  A thoughtful, shrewd examination of the impact of rapidly developing technologies.

  Best friends Yuta and Kou are on the brink of graduating from high school in a near-future Tokyo where the threat of a catastrophic earthquake casts a shadow over daily life.
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  Harvest

  Review preview for Harvest

  At times the discomfort that Harvest causes is not from dirt or despair but the room it leaves for interpretation.

  Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.
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  April

  Review preview for April

  It’s not unusual to say that something cuts through the silence but in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April it’s the silence that cuts through us.

  After a newborn dies during delivery, the morals and professionalism of an ob-gyn, Nina, come under scrutiny amid rumors that she performs illegal abortions for those in need.
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  Peaches Goes Bananas

  Review preview for Peaches Goes Bananas

  Shot over 17 years, it mingles intimate personal moments with visceral concert footage, its musical sequences knitted together with some of the best editing you’re likely to see this year.

  From sold-out concerts to family moments with her parents and sister, the passage of time brings loss but also provides liberation for an artist whose body is a canvas for artistic expression.
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  Babygirl

  Review preview for Babygirl

  Halina Reijn's film is a rewarding piece of work, in no small part because of how it challenges its subjects and its audience.

  A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.
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  Maria

  Review preview for Maria

  It is gorgeous, both to look at and to listen to. It's perhaps Larrain's most accessible film, though that's as much to do with its star as its subject.

  Dramatisation of the life of the opera singer Maria Callas.
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  Vermiglio

  Review preview for Vermiglio

  Maura Delpero’s multi-layered drama sees its heroine growing up and coming to understand the world in new ways at the same time as the village itself shifts, not altogether willingly, into the modern era.

  1944, Vermiglio, a remote mountain village. The arrival of Pietro, a deserter, into the family of the local teacher, and his love for the teacher's eldest daughter, will change the course of everyone's life.
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  The Order

  Review preview for The Order

  The Order might not be too original, both in the plot and the character department, but it is very effective, functional movie fun.

  An FBI agent comes to believe a series of violent crimes are the work of domestic terrorists.
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  Queer

  Review preview for Queer

  There’s also an emperor’s new clothes feeling to the general style, look closely and there's very little there.

  A louche older man pursues a younger boy toy in Mexico City before the pair go on the hunt for psychedelics in Ecuador.
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  The Room Next Door

  Review preview for The Room Next Door

  Almodóvar goes all out with the delights fashion has to offer, bright colours, the joy of transformation - because it is never too late for sartorial metamorphosis.

  When Ingrid finds out that her old friend Martha is seriously ill, they reunite and embark on a journey of discoveries.

A–Z of Venice Film Festival 2024 reviews →

Features

• All about character
  Alessandro Nivola on JC Chandor’s Kraven The Hunter
• Art, friendship and nature
  Tilda Swinton on dressing for Pedro Almodóvar, and The Room Next Door
• 'It is impossible to escape memory'
  Director Fabrice du Welz on the lingering trauma of the real case behind Maldoror and the questions he hopes to provoke
• Marriage of creativity
  Husband and wife Deepak Rauniyar and Asha Magrati on their latest collaboration Pooja, Sir
• A stylised world
  Alessandro Nivola on Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door
• Concrete ideas
  Alessandro Nivola on Costantino Nivola, Le Corbusier, and The Brutalist
• Costner puts his money on the line
  After Dances With Wolves he says Western saga Horizon is to put records straight

News

• Almodóvar wins Golden Lion
  Top prize in Venice goes to The Room Next Door