The Venice Film Festival has become one of the festivals film buffs look forward to every year, as it has first dibs on the films that will be in conversation come awards season.
And this year’s slate of films is impressive, especially when you take the glowing reviews and standing ovations these films have given at this year’s festival.
Many of them will go on to the Telluride Film Festival, the American Deauville Festival and then the Toronto International Film Festival, where they will officially kick off awards season.
Here are our picks of the films that made a noise at Venice and will likely be nominated for Oscars come 2022.
PARALLEL MOTHERS
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar and starring Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit, the film tells the story of two women, Janis and Ana, who are both single and became pregnant by accident.
Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant.
The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized.
Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors.
The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.
SPENCER
Directed by Pablo Larrain and starring Kristen Stewart, “Spencer” is an imagining of what the Christmas festivities were like in 1991, as the marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles grows cold.
Though rumours of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate.
There's eating and drinking, shooting and hunting.
Diana knows the game.
But this year, things will be profoundly different.
THE POWER OF THE DOG
Directed by Jane Campion and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, this film is about wealthy rancher from Montana rancher Phil Burbank, who inspires both fear and awe in those allowed in his inner circle.
He is in control of his feelings at all times, until his brother brings home a new wife and her son.
The woman is previously widowed and Phil had mocked her and her son previously.
He continues to torment them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
Matt Smith, Thomasin MacKenzie and Anya Taylor Joy star in the Edgar Wright directed psychological thriller.
When an aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to travel in time and find herself in London’s Swinging 60s, she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer.
However, the glamour is not all it appears to be, and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something far darker.
HAPPENING (L'ÉVÉNEMENT)
Audrey Diwan’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux's eponymous novel, “L'évènement”.
The French drama tells the story of a bright college student in early-1960s France who finds her emancipation threatened when she gets pregnant, with no avenues for legal abortion.
Starring Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein and Luàna Bajrami.