Venice Film Festival Director on 2024 Lineup, Netflix’s Absence

Alberto Barbera makes it look easy.

The long-running Venice festival director, who recently extended his contract through 2026, unveiled his Venice 2024 lineup on Tuesday. It included the by-now-familiar Biennale mix of award-season contenders such as Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria with Angelina Jolie, Luca Guadagnino’s William S. Burroughs adaptation Queer starring Daniel Craig. Meanwhile, there will be big-budget studio premieres, including Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which opens the festival, Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to his 2019 Golden Lion-winning global hit, and Jon Watts’ action drama Wolfs, an out-of-competition feature starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

Alongside the headline titles, a Barbera lineup always includes a few outside-the-mainstream must-sees. This year, Harmony Korine’s cinematic video game mashup Baby Invasion, and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “tragicomic Western” Harvest, starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, fit the bill.

Missing from this year’s lineup, however, is Netflix. The streaming giant, shut out of Cannes, has long been a regular on the Lido, winning Venice with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma in 2018 and Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog in 2021. Last year, Netflix brought five films to Venice: Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, The Killer from David Fincher, Spanish survival drama Society of the Snow from J.A. Bayona, Pablo Larraín’s El Conde, and the Wes Anderson-directed short The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Barbera said Netflix’s absence was “a temporary situation” and that he expected the streamer to be back in force on the Lido next year. Going into his 16th festival as director, Barbera was upbeat, predicting Venice would have its “most crowded red carpet in a decade!”

Congratulations on this year’s lineup. What was the biggest challenge this year in putting it all together?

Nothing was really different from the past few years. There were the usual things, of course, but nothing really challenging. I started worked on the submissions for the festival at the beginning of the year. I went to L.A. and New York, I went to the market in Berlin. I met all the studios, most of the independent production companies, the agencies, and so on. They offered me some films, I asked for others. In the end, most of them came to us. We had a few problems with scheduling, a few conflicts coming from competition with the other festivals, but I’d say it was less complicated this year than in the past to convince everyone to come to Venice.

There are a number of studio films in the lineup from the opener, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Joker: Folie à Deux from Warner Bros., Columbia/Sony’s Wolfs and The Brutalist from Universal/Focus Features. Has it become easier to convince the majors to use Venice as a launch platform?

Yes. I would say this is the case. In the sense, we’ve succeeded in showing how Venice can be used to launch a film and get it to land in the Oscars the following season. Since 2013, every year we’ve had at least one and usually more films from the lineup of Venice going to the Oscars. That’s created a very positive expectation from the majors, and also from the American independents, and a desire to come to Venice. It’s becoming less and less difficult to convince them to submit their films and to accept our invitation.

Did you see any lingering impact of the dual Hollywood strikes last year, in terms of the number of films submitted?

Well, there were fewer films than usual in the lineups of all the majors and all the American independents. When I traveled to New York and L.A. at the beginning of February, I came back uncertain if it would be possible to have a large contingent of American films in Venice this year. But as we got closer to the selection process, more and more films started coming, and our final lineup is filled with a lot of truly excellent American movies, so I’m very satisfied. But it’s true in general, that there have been fewer films this year than usual. The pandemic and the strikes have had an effect on production and I think Hollywood won’t be back to normal until next year.

One “studio” missing from the lineup is Netflix, which typically has a major presence on the Lido. What should we read into their absence this year?

It’s a temporary situation. Netflix didn’t have any films available for us. Scott Stuber, the person in charge of [film] production at Netflix resigned at the beginning of the year and we won’t see the results of the new production lineup until next year. But it’s not a sign of any change in our relationship with Netflix or a change on their side in terms of strategy. Absolutely not. I know Netflix will have very strong films available for Venice next year.

Are there any performances in the films this year that you think will really surprise people?

That’s like asking me to pick one child over the other! But I can say there are a couple of performances I think people will find absolutely outstanding. I’m talking about Joaquin Phoenix [in Joker: Folie à Deux] and Daniel Craig’s performance [in Queer]. I think they are the performances of their lifetimes. I would be surprised if we don’t see them at the Academy Awards next year.

As a festival director, you’ve never been afraid of embracing controversy, but there don’t seem to be any obvious scandal films in this year’s line-up. What do you expect will spark discussion?

Well, there are a lot of films dealing with the crises in the world today, with the war in Ukraine, with the war in Israel and Gaza, and there could be some polemic discussion around them. But I hope not, because there are all very good films that invite the viewers to discuss and debate, not to be polemical. I really don’t see any controversial films in our lineup this year.

The actors and writers strike last year meant many of the talents couldn’t attend. What are you expecting for this year’s red carpet?

The cast of all the films will be here. We are expecting such a large number of talents to come to Venice for the festival. It looks like it will be the most crowded red carpet we’ve had in a decade!

Personally, you’ve recently re-upped your contract for at least another two years, taking you through the 2026 festival. Any plans to retire?

No, I will keep going until they no longer want me to stay. I still like it a lot. It’s very tiring, exhausting, and is becoming more and more complicated because everything is more difficult nowadays, but I’d like to stay on until the moment they tell me to go.