From Justin Kurzel’s The Order to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, the Venice International Film Festival again lived up to its reputation as a launching pad for contenders in the awards season.

Among the  entries in the main international competition is The Order, a gripping crime thriller based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhadt’s 1989 non-fiction book. Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan star in the film that also refers to The Turner Diaries, a racist novel that incites white supremacists, including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

An epic drama, The Brutalist compellingly narrates the story of a Hungarian immigrant, played by Adrien Brody, who flees the nightmares of World War II to start a new life as a modernist architect in America. Filmed on 70mm celluloid, the movie is a visual treat, a welcome break from digital technology. Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn and Alessandro Nivola costar.

The much-ballyhooed Joker: Folie à Deux is audacious cinema. Is it a musical, a prison or courtroom drama or a psychological thriller? Whatever it is, Todd Phillips’ sequel again benefits from the intensity that Joaquin Phoenix brings to his comic-book character and a cast that includes Lady Gaga (Harley Quinn), Catherine Keener and Brendan Gleeson.

Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here is anchored by the performance of Fernanda Torres as a woman who heroically but quietly steers her brood of five children when her husband becomes one of Brazil’s “desaparecidos” (disappeared). The political drama is adapted from the 2015 book Ainda Estou Aqui of Marcelo Ruben Paiva (Salles’s real-life friend) who wrote about his mother’s journey as she held the family together and became an activist when the ex-congressmen patriarch was abducted by the military.

In his first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodovar gifts us with an understated, exquisite meditation on life, death and friendship. In his adaptation of Sigfrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through, the Spanish maestro is blessed to have Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton play old friends who reconnect under unusual circumstances.

In her most memorable role in years, Angelina Jolie plays one of the all-time greatest opera singers in Pablo Larrain’s Maria. Concentrating on Maria Callas’ final years in Paris, the film also features the supporting turns of Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher as the diva’s butler and housekeeper, respectively. Angelina’s own voice was melded with Callas’ from her recordings to bring life to the screen the US-born Greek soprano who was also called La Divina.

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson, in a major acting break, fire up Babygirl, Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller that reflects on the dynamics of power and sexuality in and out of the workplace, female desire and kink. Kidman’s CEO and Dickinson’s intern engage in a torrid affair while Antonio Banderas portrays her husband.

Queer, which Luca Guadagnino described as his most personal film yet, hauntingly depicts repressed desire and longing. In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novel, Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, playing lovers in 1950s Mexico City, appear in what has been described as the most explicit gay sex scenes in mainstream cinema. Jason Schwartzman and Lesley Manville, both almost unrecognizable, comprise the solid supporting cast.

Playful, surreal and visually striking, Luis Ortega’s Kill the Jockey is set in Bueno Aires’ mobster-run horse racing world. The cast, led by the soulful Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, enhance this gem imbued by cinematic flights of fancy.

Other noteworthy entries include Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin’s The Quiet Son, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest, Siew Hua Yeo’s Stranger Eyes and Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio.