Julia Roberts Supports Luca Guadagnino as She Arrives for Venice Festival

Film festival arrivals for movie stars are the style equivalent of arena arrivals for professional athletes, so it’s pretty fitting that Adam Sandler arrived at the Venice Film Festival this week carrying a basketball, while Julia Roberts donned a cardigan covered with the face of her team mascot for the film After the Hunt — Italian auteur and local hero Luca Guadagnino.

Those are just two of the stylish examples of A-listers descending on the famed Italian city in recent days as the world’s oldest film festival gets underway. It’s shaping up to be the starriest Venice Film Festival in recent memory, with a slew of high-profile stars expected here in the coming days for world premieres. That means a lot of chic boat arrivals, glamorous red carpet showings and quick changes for the private afterparties.

On the scene so far this week is the cast from Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly starring Sandler, George Clooney as the title character, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Emily Mortimer, Alba Rohrwacher and more, Emma Stone and colleagues from Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest film Bugonia, and Roberts along with her After the Hunt co-stars Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri. Cate Blanchett turned up to opening night, ahead of a scheduled appearance later this week for the world premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother.

En route are Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, cast members from Kathryn Bigelow’s politically charged A House of Dynamite, Amanda Seyfried for the musical Ann Lee and more. See recent arrivals below for this year’s Venice Film Festival, which runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.