The 2024 Venice Film Festival kicked off August 28 with the long-awaited Tim Burton-Michael Keaton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opening the 81th edition, which runs through September 7 on the Lido. Deadline is on the ground to watch all the key films. 

The lineup for the world’s oldest fest also includes world premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic Joker: Folie à Deux, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria starring Angelina Jolie and new works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Harmony Korine, Thomas Vinterberg, Brady Corbet, Takeshi Kitano, Claude Lelouch, Errol Morris and others.

Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its Golden Lion for best film to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who went on the win the Best Actress Oscar. Isabelle Huppert heads the competition jury this year. Click on the movie’s title to read our full take.

Babygirl

Section: Competition
Director: Halina Reijn
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde, Esther McGregor
Deadline’s takeaway: Nicole Kidman really goes the distance, imbuing Romy with a psychological vulnerability that is missing from the film it most obvious sounds like (50 Shades of Grey) and presenting a unique reversal of the film it most obviously looks like (Secretary). Halina Reijn leaves so much up in the air that Babygirl lasts longer in the mind than you think it might.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Section: Out of Competition
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Arthur Conti
Deadline’s takeaway: Michael Keaton is back as the compellingly horrible undead star, but it’s not so much a sequel — serving up more of the same — as a kooky, spooky school reunion where you find out what happened to the class weirdo. It’s also funny, all the time, and a blast to watch.

RELATED: ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’: What The Critics Are Saying

Cloud

Section: Out of Competition
Director: Kurosawa Kiyoshi
Cast: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Masataka Kubota
Deadline’s takeaway: A master of atmosphere in prize-winning films such as Wife of a Spy, Kiyoshi Kurosawa here grasps the thriller genre by the collar and gives it a good shake. Actually, Cloud manages to be many things — a social document about online communications and how radically they have reshaped the world, a snappy shoot-em-up, and a brooding moral tale.

Disclaimer

Section: Out of Competition (TV)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Hoyeon, Sacha Baron Cohen, Louis Partidge, Leila George
Deadline’s takeaway: Disclaimer is a study in confession by a filmmaker for whom perspective is the ultimate deconstruction that is less a work of towering originality but more a compelling and disturbing story within a comfort zone of discomforting tropes.

Kill the Jockey

Section: Competition
Director: Luis Ortega
Cast: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Úrsula Corberó, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Mariana Di Girolamo, Daniel Fanego, Osmar Núñez, Luis Ziembrowski
Deadline’s takeaway: A subdued yet strange piece of work, it starts out like a deadpan Wes Anderson spoof of a Stanley Kubrick gangster movie and slowly mutates. Although it has panache and style, Kill the Jockey needs a rather more substantial narrative to get it, and us, to the finish line.

Maria

Section: Competition
Director: Pablo Larraín
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Stephen Ashfield, Valeria Golino
Deadline’s takeaway: Somehow the portrait the film draws is curiously bloodless. Maria Callas the woman remains distant and unknowable; cunning to the end, she eludes us. Maria tells a fascinating story, but it lacks that rasping edge.

Separated

Section: Out of Competition (Non-Fiction)
Director: Errol Morris
Deadline’s takeaway: For those who have forgotten what that the Trump administration’s child-separation policy looked like, Morris arrives to remind us with an incisive account of how it was devised and implemented, and for what purpose.

September 5

Section: Horizon Extra
Director: Tim Fehlbaum
Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Corey Johnson, Georgina Rich
Deadline’s takeaway: Taking a story that is now 52 years old and making it not just relevant but newly inspiring is no small feat. The acting across the board is superb, and September 5 succeeds on every level.

Trois Amies

Section: Competition
Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Cast: Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier, India Hair, Grégoire Ludig, Damien Bonnard, Vincent Macaigne, Éric Caravaca
Deadline’s takeaway: The French enjoy films like Emmanuel Mouret’s relentlessly middlebrow romantic comedy, but you’ll likely have forgotten this soul-sapping soap — or want to — long before it finishes.