Hollywood heavyweights line up to launch their awards runs at Venice, which is courting criticism for also including Roman Polanski’s new film in competition

Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart and Joaquin Phoenix will be making their way to the Venice Lido for the 76th Venice film festival after the full lineup was announced by festival director, Alberto Barbera.

Prominent among the films competing for the Golden Lion are Ad Astra, the James Gray directed sci-fi epic featuring Pitt as an astronaut travelling the solar system searching for his long-lost father; the standalone supervillain movie Joker, starring Phoenix as Batman’s scarred nemesis; and Marriage Story, which features Johansson opposite Adam Driver in Noah Baumbach’s study of a divorcing couple. Stewart will appear in Seberg, a biopic of controversial American actor Jean Seberg, which screens out of competition.

Venice in recent years has often acted as a platform for US awards-race contenders; joining the above in what their backers hope will supercharge their campaigns is Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, a drama about the Panama papers investigation with Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, and David Michôd’s Shakespeare adaptation The King, starring Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson. The festival’s opening film slot – normally given to a major Oscar contender – has this time gone to the more arthouse-oriented The Truth, directed by Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda and starring Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche.

Last year, the festival attracted considerable flak for selecting only a single female director in its competition; after a tepid response to the criticism, Barbera has given space to two women in the Golden Lion lineup: Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour, whose The Perfect Candidate is about a female doctor aiming to run in local elections in the kingdom, and Australian film-maker Shannon Murphy, whose feature debut Babyteeth is a comedy about an ill teenager who falls in love with a drug dealer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest C0ntroversial choice … Jean Dujardin and Louis Garrel in J’accuse – also titled An Officer and a Spy – by Roman Polanski.

However, in a move sure to attract controversy, the festival has given a competition slot to J’Accuse, Roman Polanski’s new film about the Dreyfus affair starring Jean Dujardin and Louis Garrel. In June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences upheld their decision to expel Polanski over his continuing avoidance of a US arrest warrant following his 1978 conviction on child sex charges.

Unlike its main European rival Cannes, Venice has embraced the streaming giants, and in selecting The Laundromat, Marriage Story and The King has brought three Netflix titles into the fold. Seberg, conversely, is distributed by Amazon. The International Union of Cinemas (UNIC) issued a statement in protest, saying: “Where films are available solely on these platforms, or receive only a limited ‘technical’ release in cinemas, festival/award selection becomes in truth only a marketing tool whereby most of the potential audience is denied access to a wealth of great content.”

The festival also sees premieres for auteur favourites such as idiosyncratic Swedish director Roy Andersson, with About Endlessness, maverick Chinese film-maker Lou Ye with Saturday Fiction, and Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa’s death of Stalin documentary, State Funeral. Italian director Paolo Sorrentino is also due to bring his Young Pope follow-up The New Pope, again starring Jude Law in a Sky/HBO TV series.

The Venice film festival runs from 28 August to 7 September.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meryl Streep stars in The Laundromat, directed by Steven Soderbergh. Photograph: Claudette Barius/Netflix/Courtesy of TIFF

Full line-up of films

Competition

The Truth (dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda) – opening film

The Perfect Candidate (dir: Haifaa al-Mansour)

About Endlessness (dir: Roy Andersson)

Wasp Network (dir: Olivier Assayas)

Marriage Story (dir: Noah Baumbach)

Guest of Honour (dir: Atom Egoyan)

Ad Astra (dir: James Gray)

A Herdade (dir: Tiago Guedes)

Gloria Mundi (dir: Robert Guédiguian)

Waiting For the Barbarians (dir: Ciro Guerra)

Ema (dir: Pablo Larraín)

Saturday Fiction (dir: Lou Ye)

Martin Eden (dir: Pietro Marcello)

La Mafia Non E Piu Quella di Una Volta (dir: Franco Maresco)

The Painted Bird (dir: Vaclav Marhoul)

Il Sindaco del Rione Sanita (dir: Mario Martone)

Babyteeth (dir: Shannon Murphy)

Joker (dir: Todd Phillips)

J’Accuse (dir: Roman Polanski)

The Laundromat (dir: Steven Soderbergh)

No 7 Cherry Lane (dir: Yonfan)

Out of competition

Seberg (dir: Benedict Andrews)

Vivere (dir: Francesca Archibugi)

The Burnt Orange Heresy (dir: Giuseppe Capotondi) – closing film

The King (dir: David Michôd)

Out of competition – special screenings

Irreversible – full version (dir: Gaspar Noé)

ZeroZeroZero – TV series

The New Pope (dir: Paolo Sorrentino)

Never Just a Dream: Stanley Kubrick And Eyes Wide Shut (dir: Matt Wells)

Out of competition – non-fiction

Woman (dirs.: Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Anastasia Mikova)

Roger Waters Us + Them (dir: Sean Evans, Roger Waters)

I Diari di Angela – Noi Due Cineasti. Capitolo Secondo (dirs: Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi)

Citizen K (dir: Alex Gibney)

Citizen Rosi (dirs: Didi Gnocchi, Carolina Rosi)

The Kingmaker (dir: Lauren Greenfield)

State Funeral (dir: Sergei Loznitsa)

Collective (dir: Alexander Nanau)

45 Seconds of Laughter (dir: Tim Robbins)

Special event

Goodbye Dragon Inn (dir: Tsai Ming-Liang)