Tessa Thompson Is Giving Sci-Fi Regal in Red at Venice Film Festival

EXCLUSIVE: Genre firms Pulsar Content and XYZ Films have partnered to handle sales on the Fantastic Fest and Sitges sci-fi drama Tropic, written and directed by Edouard Salier.

The closing ceremony for the 2022 Venice Film Festival just took place and the awards winners have been revealed.

Standing between Steve Buscemi’s newest directorial effort, “The Listener,” and his last time on the director’s chair for the Sienna Miller-starring drama “Interview” is a whopping 15 years. Buscemi has been open about his desire to direct again, but nothing seemed to work out until Oscar-nominated writer Alessandro Camon knocked on his door, script in hand.

Guy Lodge Film Critic If you found yourself wide awake in the wee small hours with personal demons rattling in your brain, and you picked up the phone to share them with a patient, neutral stranger, Tessa Thompson’s measured, calming voice is more or less exactly what you’d hope to hear on the other end of the line. As Beth, a night-shift volunteer for a crisis helpline, the actor’s naturally gentle, benevolent presence is the chief asset of Steve Buscemi’s minor-key chamber drama “The Listener” — not that she has a host of elements to compete with in what amounts, on screen at least, to a one-woman show.  Thompson’s unforced credibility isn’t shared, however, by a flat, superficial script that treats an assortment of mental health ailments as quirky conversation fuel. Each anguished call that Beth takes, over the course of one long, dark night of assorted souls, is written less like a recognizable human exchange than as an actor’s heightened audition piece, and played out as such by a voice-only ensemble stacked with distractingly recognizable names. Though the global pandemic is only incidentally mentioned, “The Listener” plays in all aspects like a project conceived in the most self-searching and self-indulgent depths of the isolation era. It’s hard to imagine audiences wanting to enter that headspace now.

In his acting life, Steve Buscemi has certainly mixed things up, finding time for Bruckheimer/Simpson blockbusters, Pixar animation and even Adam Sandler movies in a bid to avoid typecasting as the definitive New York indie guy. In his directing career, however, he tends to stick to a certain genre: small, intimate, personal films like his excellent 1996 debut Trees Lounge, which told the story of a melancholic underachiever whose life revolves around a seedy dive bar where the crowd of misfit regulars become his bizarre de facto family. Loneliness is a familiar motif in Buscemi’s work, and he excelled himself with that in 2005’s Lonesome Jim, starring Casey Affleck as a young man who’s failed in the big city and now has to move in with his parents.

Tessa Thompson rocked a new look at the latest premiere during the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

comes to digital, 4K, Blu-Ray, and DVD on Sept. 27, and with it a reel of never-before-seen bloopers from the film's set.

Tessa Thompson stole the red carpet spotlight with her dramatic look at the Don’t Worry Darling during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Christopher Vourlias On the eve of the 79th Venice Film Festival, where his powerful Ukraine war documentary “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” will premiere out of competition on Sept. 7, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky was in a frantic race against time. Footage was still being shot in Ukraine into the second week of August, with Afineevsky only completing the film on Aug. 31 — the same day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the A-list celebrities and foreign press at the festival’s opening ceremony, urging the world not to forget the war in Ukraine with the impassioned plea: “Don’t turn your back to us.”

The stars are stepping out for Il Ballo Della Luce!

There’s no shortage of star power on the Lido this year. The 79th Venice Film Festival boasts such boldface names as Timothée Chalamet — along with his fellow the Bones And All castmates and filmmaker Luca Guadagnino — Cate Blanchett, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Adam Driver and dozens more.

Tessa Thompson is rocking two more looks at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

The stars are giving us major fashion moments at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

Drama has been served! Hollywood’s biggest names are showing out at the 79th Venice Film Festival, stepping onto the red carpet in looks that have Us doing a double take.

Dylan Sprouse and his girlfriend Barbara Palvin shared a sweet moment on the 79th Venice International Film Festival red carpet.  The couple walked on the red carpet in Venice, Italy for the premiere of Noah Baumbach's "White Noise," starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle and Jodie Turner-Smith, and took a moment to share a kiss.  Palvin, who is an ambassador for Armani Beauty wore a black sequence dress with her hair in a bun while her boyfriend wore a classy black tuxedo.  Dylan Sprouse shared a kiss with his girlfriend Barbara Palvin on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival.  (Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) The "Suite Life of Zack and Cody" actor started dating the model in 2018, and they took their relationship to the next level shortly after when they moved in together in 2019.  Dylan Sprouse and Barbara Palvin arrived together at Venice Airport ahead of the festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Bankside Films has boarded international sales for Steve Buscemi-directed Venice Film Festival drama The Listener, starring Tessa Thompson (Creed).

of late, from the translucent Interior NYC gown she wore to Westworld’s season four premiere to the dramatic and cycling shorts she sported on the streets of London earlier this summer.Over at Venice Film Festival, the actor has already delivered a series of stand-out moments—arriving in style in , paired with a clashing Vivienne Westwood bag and bright red gloves. This was quickly followed up with a black tulle skirt and oversized blazer by Rodarte, worn with a black bralette underneath.For her latest red-carpet appearance on Wednesday, August 31, Thompson opted for vintage—stepping out for the White Noise premiere in a sci-fi inspired look from Armani Privé’s autumn/winter 2009 couture show.

has officially kicked off, with stars including Adam Driver, Tessa Thompson, and even Hillary Clinton turning out for the opening gala. White Noise, starring Adam and Greta Gerwig and directed by Noah Baumbach, opened the annual festival, with celebs showing out in force on the red carpet. Adam suited up in a tuxedo, while co-star Greta stunned in a beautiful black gown.

Clayton Davis In a world where politicians use mental health as mere talking points when discussing gun violence and suicide rates, Steve Buscemi’s “The Listener” addresses the crisis head-on. Written by Alessandro Camon, the Oscar-nominated scribe of “The Messenger” (2009), the film follows a helpline volunteer named Beth, played by Tessa Thompson, who is an integral part of the small army of counselors who field calls from all kinds of people who feel lonely and broken. The film unspools at the Venice Festival’s Giornate degli Autori and is the closing film of Venice Days on Sept. 9. Buscemi can sympathize with anyone who feels lost and broken, especially as he is still reeling from losing his wife Jo Andres in January 2019; they had been married for over 30 years. While in pre-production, the director and producer called a helpline number. “At first, it was in the name of research,” Buscemi told Variety. “I had these dreams in the night involving my late wife, and it was reason enough for me to call. I had an amazing 15-minute talk with this person. I’ll never know who she was, and I never told her who I was. I just talked about Jo, and it was important.”

Jodie Turner-Smith has a major fashion moment on the red carpet at the premiere of White Noise during the 2022 Venice Film Festival on Wednesday (August 31) in Venice, Italy.