Venice Film Festival Full Line Up To Include 'Henry Sugar' While Snubbing Poirot

The Venice Film Festival is the unofficial kickoff to awards season, where many of the fall and holiday-timed debuts first screen to build critical buzz. However, between the current SAG-AFTRA strike and the massive box office one-two punch of Barbinheimer, this year’s offerings may not land with the same impact. There are a few British-led films viewers should be aware of, as a release at Venice suggests a US release date won’t be far behind, but one major title is missing.

Finally Dawn (Finalmente L’Alba), written and directed by Saverio Costanzo (best known in the States for HBO’s My Brilliant Friend), will debut in competition at Venice. A period drama set in 1950s Italy, and the golden age of Rome’s historic Cinecittà, it centers on ingenue Mimosa, played by newcomer Rebecca Antonaci. It is a coming-of-age story that begins when Mimosa is hired as one of the thousands of extras for an English-language swords-and-sandals film. The film-within-a-film’s main cast played by Lily James (Rebecca), Joe Keery (Stranger Things), Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), Alba Rohrwacher (The Lost Daughter), and Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project).

Netflix’s official kickoff for its Roald Dahl universe of movies, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, will also premiere in Venice, but out of competition. Though 2022’s Matilda the Musical was labeled part of Netflix’s Dahliverse, the studio acquired it ahead of the overall deal with Dahl’s estate. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Sugar, with Wes Anderson directing. Also debuting out of competition, Robert Lorenz’s Irish thriller In the Land of Saints and Sinners, starring Liam Neeson, will be included in the Venice “Horizons” sidebar series.