Venice Film Festival Reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘Jay Kelly,’ ‘La Grazia’ and More

Ciao! The 82nd annual Venice Film Festival is underway and the stars have hit the canals, with this year’s world premieres including Yorgos Lanthimos kidnap thriller “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s showbiz dramedy “Jay Kelly,” Guillermo del Toro’s lavish adaptation “Frankenstein,” Luca Guadagnino’s college campus thriller “After the Hunt” and Benny Safdie’s UFC biopic “The Smashing Machine.”

New films from Mona Fastvold, Kathryn Bigelow, Paolo Sorrentino, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook, Gus Van Sant, Lucrezia Martel, László Nemes and Kaouther Ben Hania are also in the lineup. This year’s jury is headed by Alexander Payne, the director of films like “The Holdovers,” “Election” and “Sideways.”

Venice often serves as the launch of awards season, coming ahead of an onslaught of other fall festivals including Telluride, Toronto and New York that distributors use to lay the foundation for campaigning in the coming months.

See all of Variety’s reviews from the 2025 Venice Film Festival below. The roundup will be updated throughout the festival to include the most recent reviews.

‘Jay Kelly’ (dir. Noah Baumbach)

Read Variety’s review: George Clooney plays a version of himself in Noah Baumbach’s lightly diverting but overly soft inside-Hollywood drama. The lead character is a beloved movie star just like Clooney… except for the cold dark side we don’t quite believe.

‘Bugonia’ (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Read Variety’s review: Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons descend into a riveting duel in Yorgos Lanthimos’ scaldingly topical kidnap thriller. The director is at the top of his visionary nihilistic game in a movie about what’s happening to the world.

‘Orphan’ (dir. László Nemes)

Read Variety’s review: László Nemes returns with a heavy dose of sepia-tinted childhood torment. The “Son of Saul” director’s portrait of a 12-year-old boy confronted with ugly family secrets in 1950s Soviet-occupied Hungary is handsomely mounted but narratively inert.

‘Memory’ (dir. Vladlena Sandu)

Read Variety’s review:A haunting memorial collage crafted from a child’s experience of war, Ukrainian director Vladlena Sandu’s strikingly illustrated recollections of war-torn Grozny form an anguished, urgent, mesmerizing portrait of self-replicating generational trauma.

‘La Grazia’ (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

Read Variety’s review: Paolo Sorrentino opens the Venice Film Festival with a presidential drama more understated than usual for him, and better for it. Toni Servillo plays the president of Italy, who is staid to a fault (just like the movie), though with hidden depths.