Venice Film Festival wrap-up: Awards, buzz and Kevin Costners Horizon

VENICE, Italy -- The 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival is coming to close Saturday, with the world premiere of Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2” and the awards ceremony.With no real consensus pick going into the evening, eyes are focused on what the Isabelle Huppert-led jury will bestow prizes upon this year.Many of the 21 titles playing in competition have been divisive, with passionate supporters and detractors.Among the highest profile of the films up for the top prize include: Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the not-a-musical-musical with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga ; Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas film “Maria,” starring Angela Jolie as the famed soprano; the erotic thriller “Babygirl” in which Nicole Kidman gets entangled in a complicated affair with an intern, played by Harris Dickinson; Luca Guadagnino’s William S.

Burroughs adaptation “Queer,” with Daniel Craig as a junkie expat obsessed with a young student; Brady Corbet’s 215-minute post-war epic about an architect and a Holocaust survivor rebuilding a life in America, “The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody; and Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language mediation on death and friendship, “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.Five years ago, the Venice jury surprised the film world by giving the Golden Lion to “Joker,” which went on to win a best actor Oscar for Phoenix.Last year the top award went to “Poor Things” and the year before, the documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”Though always a player in the international festival scene, Venice has cemented its reputation as a major launching pad for awards campaigns over the past 12 years.

Since 2014, they’ve hosted four best picture winners (“Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “The Shape of Water” and “Nomadland”) and 19 nominees.And buzz is already swirling about possible best actress nominations for Kidman and Jolie, actor for C...