Venice 2015: Cary Fukunaga and Tom McCarthy headed to film festival

The late-summer film festival schedule locked in another piece Wednesday as Venice announced its full lineup.

The Italy-set gathering announced a number of major titles from U.S. filmmakers, including Tom McCarthy’s Catholic church-scandal drama “Spotlight,” Cary Fukunaga’s child-soldier tale “Beasts of No Nation,” and Scott Cooper’s Whitey Bulger movie, “Black Mass.”

All three will make their world premieres in Venice and then are expected to complete the trifecta, hitting Telluride, Colo., and Toronto on these shores. That circuit is considered one path to awards attention, putting the films on media and tastemaker radars before they open commercially in the fall (or, in the case of “Beasts,” play in theaters and Netflix simultaneously in the fall).

A number of American indies also are set to make their debuts in Venice, as Charlie Kaufman’s feature-animation debut “Anomalisa” and Drake Doremus’ future-set “Equals” both world-premiere there; the former is also headed to Toronto and likely Telluride.

Venice, which begins Sept. 2, is known as a kind of late-summer equivalent to Cannes and, as such, has many foreign titles on its slate; among the notables this year are Amos Gitai’s Yitzhak Rabin assassination picture “Rabin, The Last Day” and Gianfranco Pannone’s “The Smallest Army in the World,” a movie from and about the Vatican.

The latest movie from Danish “A Hijacking” director Tobias Lindholm, titled “A War,” is also headed to Venice, while Denmark will be on festival minds in other ways when Tom Hooper’s “The Danish Girl,” about the transgender artist Lili Elbe, world-premieres there on its way to Toronto, likely skipping Telluride. (For the full Venice lineup, click here.)

The festival previously announced “Everest” as its opening-night title. The star-laden survival picture, directed by Baltasar Kormakur, walks in some notable footsteps: It follows the openers “Birdman” in 2014 and “Gravity” in 2013, both of which ended up winning best Oscars for best director.

Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT