Many new features at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival

The festival has 21 films competing for the main prize, and all have one thing in common: their length. "This year's films are all between 2 hours and 2 hours and 30 minutes long. Putting such long films into the festival program is a problem," said Alberto Barbera, artistic director of the Venice Film Festival 2025. The long length of films makes it difficult for the jury to evaluate the work and screen it for the public. Specifically, "Frankenstein" by director Guillermo del Toro has a length of 149 minutes, while "Silent Friend" (pictured) by Ildikó Enyedi has a length of 145 minutes. In addition, many films such as "La Grazia", "No Other Choice", "Jay Kelly", "Orphan" ... all have a length of more than 130 minutes.

In the non-competitive film category, only shown at the Venice Film Festival, “Director's Diary” by veteran Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov has a running time of up to 305 minutes, or more than 5 hours. Experts say that the trend of long films is increasing, not only at film festivals but also in commercial films. Typically, “Avatar”, parts 1 and 2 both have a running time of over 2 hours and the upcoming part 3, released in December 2025, has a running time of over 3 hours. Alberto Barbera believes that this is a “new international standard” when like-minded producers make long films.

In addition, this year's Venice Film Festival recorded an increase in the scale and quality of documentaries. In previous Film Festivals, there were only 6-10 documentaries, but this year there were up to 19 films. Alberto Barbera assessed: this sign shows that this production segment is growing, both in quality and public interest. Accordingly, some notable documentaries are: "Marc by Sofia" by Sofia about the portrait of fashion designer Marc Jacobs, "Ghost Elephants" by Werner Herzog about a mysterious herd of elephants in the Angolan jungle, "Cover-Up" by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh...

Another notable point at this year’s Venice Film Festival is the number of female directors. Of the 21 competing films, 6 are directed by female directors, showing an improvement in the number of women nominated and competing. Among them is the return of filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow - the first female director in history to win an Oscar with “The Hurt Locker” (2008). Kathryn Bigelow returns to Venice with “A House of Dynamite”. In addition, this list also includes notable names such as: Ben Hania, Fastvold, Valérie Donzelli, Ildikó Enyedi…

At this year’s Venice Film Festival, films from online platforms are also present. In 2024, Netflix was completely absent from the Venice Film Festival, but this year the company has 3 very strong candidates: Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly”, Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”. These works can completely become Oscar candidates in 2026. Meanwhile, Amazon MGM Studios is present with Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt”. Mubi is present with 4 competing films: Sorrentino’s “La Grazia”, Park Chan Wook’s “No Other Choice”, Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” and Nemes’s “Orphan”.

BAO LAM (Synthesized from Screen Daily, Thevenicefest, Variety)

Source: https://baocantho.com.vn/nhieu-net-moi-o-lien-hoan-phim-quoc-te-venice-2025-a189686.html