Frankenstein revival Monsters in the spotlight at Venice festival

When Guillermo del Toro accepted the best director Bafta in 2018 for The Shape of Water, he paid homage in his speech to Mary Shelley, calling her "the most important figure from English legacy".

- Nadia Khomami

"She picked up the plight of Caliban and she gave weight to the burden of Prometheus," Del Toro said. "She gave voice to the voiceless and presence to the invisible, and she showed me that sometimes to talk about monsters, we need to fabricate monsters of our own."

Nearly two decades after announcing his intention to adapt Shelley's Frankenstein, the Mexican film-maker is unveiling his vision of the classic at the Venice film festival. Featuring Oscar Isaac as the obsessive scientist and Jacob Elordi as the monster, the film rekindles Shelley's meditation on the fragile boundary between humanity and monstrosity.

Alberto Barbera, Venice's artistic director, said monsters were the "fil rouge" of this year's festival, from Del Toro's fantastical creature to "real monsters" of the last century. "We have films about dictators of the past and present," he said. "There are films about the monstrosity of war in Ukraine and Gaza, the monstrosity of crimes committed by normal people, and the menace of the atomic bomb."

The lineup includes Olivier Assayas's political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin, which traces Vladimir Putin's rise to power and stars Jude Law as the future Russian president.