09/07/2024 - Two weeks before Alberto Barbera reveals the festival’s official selection, we take a look at the French movies most likely making their way to the Lido

Two weeks ahead of the official selection’s unveiling on 23 July by Alberto Barbera, uncertainty still reigns over the identity of the French candidates set to world premiere in the 81st Venice Film Festival (running 28 August to 7 September). It has to be said that the artistic director of the Italian gathering has shown far more caution than in previous years when he sent out firm invitations in advance. These days he’s favouring a new "open invitation” concept (creating an official selection without revealing to the film teams the sections in which their works are screening until the public unveiling of the programme). But rumours are rife in the French film industry and patterns do tend to emerge.

For the official competition, whose jury is presided over by Isabelle Huppert (read our news), the film in pole position is believed to be Emmanuel Mouret’s Three Friends [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. For the record, almost all of the filmmaker’s previous 11 feature films have been presented in the major festivals and their different showcases, ranging from Cannes (his latest movie, Diary of a Fleeting Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emmanuel Mouret
film profile], screened in the Cannes Première section in 2022, with the director previously gracing the official selection in 2020 and the Directors’ Fortnight in 2004 and 2006) through to Venice (namely the Giornate degli Autori section in 2007), by way of Locarno (in competition 2013 and gracing the Piazza Grande in 2011) and Toronto (selected for the Platform line-up in 2018).

Other stand-out contenders likely to battle it out for the 2024 Golden Lion are And Their Children After Them [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, La vallée des fous by Xavier Beauvois (toplined by Jean-Paul Rouve) and The Quiet Son [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Delphine and Muriel Coulin
film profile] by Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

French feature films seeking selection in Venice’s other festival line-ups (out of competition, Orizzonti, Giornate degli autori, International Critics’ Week) include Planète B [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aude Léa Rapin
film profile] by Aude Léa Rapin (starring Adèle Exarchopoulos, Souheila Yacoub, India Hair and Jonathan Couzinié), Little Jaffna [+see also:
film review
interview: Lawrence Valin
film profile] by Lawrence Valin, Call of Water [+see also:
film review
interview: Élise Otzenberger, Cécile d…
film profile] by Elise Otzenberger, My Everything [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anne-Sophie Bailly
film profile] by Anne-Sophie Bailly, Hello Madness by Judith Davis (article) and L'attachement [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carine Tardieu
film profile] by Carine Tardieu.

(Translated from French)