Venice unveils film festival line-up

Stephen Frears' Philomena stars Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan

New films from Stephen Frears, Terry Gilliam and Jonathan Glazer will have their world premieres at this year's Venice International Film Festival.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci will head the jury at the event, which runs from 28 August to 7 September.

Twenty titles in all will compete for the festival's Golden Lion award.

As previously announced, Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts, will open the event.

Frears' film Philomena sees Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan tell the true story of a woman who searched for 50 years to find the child she was forced to give up.

Gilliam's The Zero Theorem stars Christoph Waltz as a reclusive computer genius attempting to solve a mathematical equation that will determine whether life has meaning.

Also in competition is Under the Skin, the first feature from Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer since 2004's Birth.

Based on the novel by Michael Faber, it stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien who searches remote roads in Scotland to find human prey.

Also on the line up is Child of God. Directed by and starring James Franco, it tells of a violent loner who lives in a cave in the mountains of Tennessee.

The festival will open with Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

Titles showing out of competition include Steven Knight's Locke, a real-time thriller starring Tom Hardy and Olivia Colman.

Paul Schrader's erotic thriller The Canyons, written by Bret Easton Ellis and featuring Lindsay Lohan, will also have a special screening.

Kim Ki-Duk's controversial film Moebius, which has struggled to get a release in South Korea due to its incestuous content, is also being shown out of competition.

Its director won the Golden Lion last year with his film Pieta, about a brutal debt collector who is forced to examine his life.