Watch as Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at Venice Film Festival for Joker: Folie a Deux premiere

Watch as Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at the Venice Film Festival ahead of the world premiere of Joker : Folie a Deux .

Todd Phillips’ film is one of the most highly anticipated of the festival, playing in the official competition five years after Joker won the coveted Golden Lion.

Joker: Folie a Deux finds’ Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck institutionalised at Arkham and awaiting trial for his crimes - and it’s there that he meets Gaga’s Harley Quinn.

“We knew we had to swing for the fences; we wanted to create something as crazy and fearless as Joker himself,” Phillips wrote in his directors’ statement.

“So, Scott Silver and I wrote a script that delved further into the idea of identity. Who is Arthur Fleck? And where does the music inside him come from?”

The Joker sequel is competing for the festival’s main prizes against the likes of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door , Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and Pablo Larrain’s Maria .

Awards will be presented on the final day of the festival, Saturday 7 September.