The Venice Film Festival 2013 boasts one of the most intriguing movie line-ups of the year, with two fallen heroes of cinema coming in from the cold and testing out new material after underwhelming efforts last time out.

Terry Gilliam and Jonathan Glazer will screen their new movies, The Zero Theorem and Under the Skin.

Gilliam hasn't been seen since 2009's poorly received The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, while Sexy Beast director Glazer was scolded by the box-office almost a decade ago with Birth.

Gilliam's new movie stars Oscar-favorite Christoph Waltz as a reclusive maths genius whose goal is to discover the reason for human existence.It co-stars Matt Damon, Ben Wishaw and the excellent Tilda Swinton.

Glazer's movie, adapted from Michel Faber's 2000 novel, stars Scarlett Johansson as a flesh-eating alien hungry for hitchhikers in the highlands of Scotland. No, we haven't made that up.

Watch a clip from Gravity:

Other movies to screen in competition at the film festival include James Franco's adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel Child of God and David Gordon Green's Joe, starring Nicholas Cage as a Mississippi tree poisoner.

In the out-of-competition slots, Paul Schrader premieres his Bret Easton Ellis penned movie The Canyons with Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen, and Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi thriller Gravity opens the festival on August 28, 2013.

Terry GilliamTerry Gilliam Directs 'The Zero Theorem

Alfonso Cuaron
Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity Opens the Venice Film Festival

James Franco
James Franco at the Cannes Film Festival