Love will be filling the air when the Venice Film Festival kicks off on August 31. Damien Chazelle's romantic comedy "La La Land," starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, is set to open the 11-day event in Italy.

Stone plays Mia, an aspiring actress, and and Gosling Sebastian, a jazz musician. When the dream couple starts to celebrate respective career successes, their love affair is faced with new challenges.

Fashion designer Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals," starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, is also included on the shortlist, as is Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi thriller "Arrival."

Natalie Portman meanwhile stars in another in-competition film, "Jackie," a biopic about former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The movie by Pablo Larrain recounts her experiences in the days immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

A truly international line up

The Venice Film Festival on Thursday released its lineup of 20 films, which will be competing for the coveted Golden Lion, handed out on Saturday, September 10.

Though the majority of the films come from the US, five German co-productions are also on the list, as are movies from the Philippines, Mexico, Italy and co-productions from Chile, Switzerland, Belgium and other countries.

Representing Germany, Wim Wenders' French-German co-production "Les beaux jours d'Aranjuez" is also in the running. Set in Paris in the summer, the romantic tale, based on a play by Austrian writer Peter Handke, joins a man and woman as they share their thoughts on love and freedom.

The festival is due to conclude on September 10 with Denzel Washington, starring in Antoine Fuqua's remake of "The Magnificent Seven." For the complete list of in-competition films, visit the Venice Film Festival's website.

kbm/ss (dpa, AP)