VENICE - Stars galore will light up this year's Venice Film Festival, which opens on Wednesday, bringing sex, song and soul-searching to the Lido, making up for a low wattage 2023 edition when a strike kept most A-listers away.

The 11-day event fires the starting gun for the awards season, with films premiering at Venice in the last three years collecting 77 Oscar nominations and winning 14, making it the place to be seen for actors, producers and directors alike.

Among the leading lights expected in Venice this year are Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Lady Gaga, Joaquin Phoenix, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Tilda Swinton and Adrien Brody.

"Everybody is really very eager to come back to Venice after the long strike of last year. So we're going to have the most crowded red carpet ever, I think," the festival's artistic director Alberto Barbera told Reuters on Tuesday.

The 2023 strike by Hollywood actors forced many to skip the gathering, with unions telling their members not to promote their projects to put pressure on the big studios.

This year, some of the stars have even paid their own way to make sure they get snapped on the Venice Lido, where fans strain to watch their favorites arrive for the glitzy premieres.

"It seems that the productions could not invite all the talents so they paid for the ticket and the hotel and everything just to be here," he said. 

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Among the films contending for the Golden Lion top prize are Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie a Deux, starring Phoenix and Gaga, Pablo Larrain's Maria, with Jolie playing the opera diva Maria Callas, and Luca Guadagnino's Queer, with Craig defying the James Bond stereotype and playing a gay American.

Barbera said Craig had "a couple of sex scenes that are quite full on" - one of a number of movies on show that don't shy away from sex after years of relative prudishness.

"It seems that sex was banned from the screens in the last 10, 15 years. I don't know if it was a matter of a sort of auto censorship or whatever. Now it's back," he said.

Regulars and newcomers

The festival opens with Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - a sequel to his 1988 comedy, which reunites some of the original cast, including Keaton and Ryder, and throws in newcomers like Ortega, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe.

The film is playing out of competition, alongside Jon Watts' Wolfs, starring Venice regulars Pitt and Clooney, and the latest feature by Japan's Takeshi Kitano, Broken Rage.

Venice prides itself on drawing both blockbusters and auteur movies, established names and fresh faces, with over half the competition films this year made by directors who are new to the festival.

"We have, of course, a lot of great filmmakers, some of the most expected films of the new season, but a lot of discoveries, new talents from all over the world. So it's really a mirror of the contemporary cinema," Barbera said.

A total of 21 movies will play in the main competition, including Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's first English-language film, The Room Next Door, starring Swinton and Julianne Moore about a fraught mother-daughter relationship.

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"I would be surprised if some of the films do not appear again at the Oscars ceremony. Joker is one of those, Queer by Luca Guadagnino as well (and) the Almodovar is a very good film," said Barbera, who whittled down his selection from around 4,000 applicants.