Roman Polanski’s “J’Accuse,” Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat” are among the films that will screen at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival, Venice organizers announced at a press conference in Rome on Thursday.
This will mark Polanski’s first appearance at a major festival since his May 2018 expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with the decision by the AMPAS Board of Governors referencing his 1978 guilty plea to a charge of statutory rape.
“J’Accuse,” which had been screening for buyers under the title “An Officer and a Spy,” is his dramatization of the Alfred Dreyfus scandal in 19th century France, and has been considered by some, sight unseen, as a comment of sorts on the #MeToo movement.