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Alberto Barbera presided over a lengthy press conference Tuesday morning, when he announced the stacked lineup for this year’s Venice Film Festival, which runs August 27-September 6.

The lineup is expansive, with big names and arthouse darlings sprinkled across the festival’s strands, even including the shorts program.

High-profile titles include Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny. Roberts leads the cast as a college professor who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student (Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Garfield), and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light. The film will screen Out of Competition on Guadagnino and Amazon MGM Studios’ request, Barbera explained during the presser.

Elsewhere, in Competition we have Jay Kelly, the latest film Noah Baumbach has made for Netflix. The...

French-Moroccan multi-hyphenate Roschdy Zem (“Days of Glory,” “The Innocent”) and Italy’s Barbara Ronchi (“Kidnapped”) are set to star in psychological drama “Elisa — Io la volevo uccidere” by Italian director Leonardo Di Costanzo.

Zem, who is one of France’s most bankable actors, will play a compassionate criminologist named Alaoui, whose life intersects with a young woman named Elisa, played by Ronchi. Elisa comes from a middle class family and has been in prison for 10 years for brutally killing her sister.

Rounding off the cast is Diego Ribon (“Doc”), who plays Elisa’s father.

Shooting is set to start March 1 on “Elisa — Io la volevo uccidere,” which is the film’s Italian working title and translates as “Elisa — I Wanted to Kill Her.”

Carlo Cresto-Dina and Manuela Melissano are producing “Elisa” via Cresto-Dina’s Tempesta shingle with backing from Italy’s Rai Cinema. The film is being co-produced with Michela Pini...

“The Witcher” Season 4 Gets First Look

The journey continues. Netflix has released the first-look images for its upcoming fourth season of “The Witcher,” with Liam Hemsworth now in the starring role.

Hemsworth takes over as Geralt of Rivia from Henry Cavill, who announced he would be stepping down after the show’s third season, which was released on the streamer in two parts last summer.

Per the official description, the fourth season will follow Geralt, Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), and Ciri (Freya Allan) as they “are faced with traversing the war-ravaged Continent and its many demons apart from each other. If they can embrace and lead the groups of misfits they find themselves in, they have a chance of surviving the baptism of fire and finding one another again.”

Watch the Season 4 First Look for “The Witcher” below:

Netflix recently announced a Season 5 renewal for the popular fantasy series, which is...

“Monterossi: Season 2” finds Monterossi (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) still stuck with his producing role on the sleazy talk show he created, “Crazy Love”, that he’s been regretting since it started sliding into lowbrow exploitation. Flora (Carla Signoris), the domineering host, continues to push for the most lurid guests and topics, much to his chagrin. It’s akin to the havoc Dr. Frankenstein unleashed despite his laudable reanimation intentions. Monterossi had hoped for an “Oprah”, only to see his project devolve into a “Jerry Springer”.

The first season was six 45-minute episodes split evenly over two separate mysteries. This one covers one set of crimes in five.

My review of Season One of this charming light crime series from Italian TV, “Monterossi” will bring you up to speed or refresh your memory. This next round again delivers the goods on scripts, performances and settings.

“Monterossi” – TV series review

Three bodies of...