While many critics and journalists (including our own correspondent, A.A. Dowd) have characterized this year’s Cannes Film Festival as underwhelming, the line-up for its fall cousin, the Venice Film Festival, is bursting with potential. As Variety reports, the main competition and sidebar selections includes Darren Aronofsky’s horror film Mother!, starring Jennifer Lawrence; Guillermo Del Toro’s 1960s-set merman movie The Shape Of Water; Lean On Pete, the latest from British writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years); Martin McDonaugh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Ex Libris: New York Public Library, a new film by documentary titan Frederick Wiseman; Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno, the first new film by Tunisian-French writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche since his Cannes prize-winner Blue Is The Warmest Color; Zama, Lucrecia Martial’s long-awaited follow-up to The Headless Woman; the black comedy Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney and starring Matt Damon; and Caniba, by Leviathan directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravell. And that’s just barely scratching the surface.