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Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson will be making a bid for festival respectability in Venice this year where she’ll be pulling double duty as a supporting player in Scott Cooper‘s Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass and Luca Guadagnino’s thriller A Bigger Splash.
Both are both part of the Venice Film Festival‘s lineup, which organizers unveiled on Wednesday. The first will play out of competition, while the latter is part of the competition lineup.
In Black Mass, Johnson plays Lindsey Cyr, a waitress and former fashion model who became the girlfriend and common law-wife of the notorious Boston gangster, played in the film by Johnny Depp. In Bigger Splash, Johnson co-stars alongside Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone).
Fox Searchlight has picked up Bigger Splash for a U.S. release, while Warner Bros. is bowing Black Mass worldwide.
Schoenaerts will also be on double duty in the Venice this year, with two competition entries. In addition to playing a rock star married to Swinton’s filmmaker character in Bigger Splash, he can be seen as gay rights activist Hans Axgil in Tom Hooper‘s hotly anticipated The Danish Girl. The long-in-development project features Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne as Danish artist and transgender pioneer Lili Elbe.
Look out as well for British actress Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac) and Italy’s Alba Rohrwacher in Venice this year. The two co-star in Nicolas Saada‘s Horizons section entry Taj Mahal.
Rohrwacher, who impressed in last year’s Cannes Grand Jury prize winner The Wonders (directed by her sister Alice Rohrwacher), also headlines Marco Bellocchio‘s historic drama Sangue del mio sangue, which will premiere in Venice in competition.
Martin also co-stars in The Childhood of a Leader, a Horizons title from director Brady Corbet.
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