Below, everything else you need to know about this year’s ceremony:
Alexander Payne will chair the jury
American director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants, The Holdover) will take on the role of jury president at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, succeeding Isabelle Huppert. His appointment has proven controversial, however, given the filmmaker has faced allegations of sexual assault from actress Rose McGowan.
Kim Novak and Werner Herzog will receive honorary Golden Lions
Kim Novak made her final film appearance in 1991, in Mike Figgis’s Liebestraum, before retiring from Hollywood. This summer, however, Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic muse—best known for her role as Madeleine Elster in Vertigo—will return to the spotlight to receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.
According to artistic director Alberto Barbera, who shared the news on June 10, the decision to honor the actress was an obvious one, as she is “one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films, from her auspicious debut during the mid-1950s until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles a short while later.”
Earlier this year, it was announced that Werner Herzog would also receive the same honor. With more than 70 films to his name—spanning fiction and documentary works created across the globe—the German filmmaker has left an indelible mark on the history of cinema. According to Alberto Barbera, Herzog has done so by “testing our ability to see, challenging us to grasp what lies beyond the surface of reality, and pushing the limits of cinematic representation in a relentless quest for a higher, ecstatic truth and new sensory experiences.”
When will the full lineup be released?
The full slate of films headed to the 2025 Venice Film Fesitval is expected to be unveiled at the end of July.