South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong doesn’t release films very often, but when he does, he makes sure every devastating second counts. His last film, Burning, is one of the best of the last decade, so we can’t wait to see what Lee has in store with the Netflix-backed Possible Love, which follows the colliding lives of two married couples.

This will be Hirokazu Koreeda’s second major festival entry this year, after his underwhelming Sheep In The Box played in competition at Cannes this year. We’re hoping Look Back, his adaptation of the wonderful 2024 animated film of the same name, will mark a return to form for the acclaimed Japanese filmmaker.

Guy Pearce plays controversial British media mogul Rupert Murdoch in Danny Boyle’s adaptation of James Graham’s play Ink, which charts the rise of Murdoch’s publishing empire as he and Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell) relaunch The Sun newspaper in 1969. The opening film at the festival this year.

It’s a family affair in the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s latest narrative feature Bucking Fastard, which sees real-life sisters Rooney and Kate Mara playing British twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, who rose to fame in the 1980s for their mirrored movements and seemingly inseparable existence.

Egyptian-Danish filmmaker May el-Toukhy’s follow-up to her acclaimed Queen of Hearts looks like another morally thorny examination of power and identity. A post-war drama, Woman Unknown follows Marie (Mathilde Arcel), a young housekeeper whose planned marriage to her wealthy employer is threatened when a secret from her wartime past comes back to haunt her.

Martin McDonagh trades in a similar psychogeography as Banshees of Inisherin, heading to Easter Island in the 1970s, where CIA agent John Malkovich grapples with his mortality against the backdrop of a Chilean coup. Co-starring Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Parker Poesey, we’re already tipping this as an Awards frontrunner.

A 7-hour documentary about Bernando Bertolucci? If Luca Guadagnino is making it, why not? Playing in the ‘film on films’ category of Venice, Joie de Vivre is tipped as a “deeply personal” ode to the Italian filmmaker. “I am the protagonist of the movie,” said Guadagnino. “It could be called Bertolucci and I.”

It’s truly the year of RPatz, and following his successful turn in The Odyssey and just preceding Dune: Part Three, we are very excited about Primetime, A24’s intriguing biopic about To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, who turned sting operations into national media sensations.

Arthouse Italian filmmaker Alina Marazzi—known for her exquisite use of archival footage and home movies—is set to open the Orizzonti section with an adaption of Helena Janeczek’s novel about Gerda Taro, one of the first female war photographers, reconstructed through the eyes of those who knew her.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem star as a married couple in Florian Zeller’s fourth feature about an architect who accepts a commission to create a survival bunker. Zeller is always a master at family dynamics, and Cruz and Bardem’s off-screen relationship is bound to make this on-screen portrait of a marriage breakdown even more brilliant.