Voyage of Time, Nocturnal Animals and Les Beaux Jours d'Aranjuez will vie with 17 others for the Golden Lion.
Also included as official selections are Pablo Larrain's Kennedy biopic, Jackie, and Ana Lily Amirpour's cannibal love story, The Bad Batch.
The event opens with Damien Chazelle's musical La La Land on 31 August.
Malick's Voyage Of Time, which he has worked on for over three decades, is an exploration of life on Earth narrated across two edits by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
Wenders has previously won the Golden Lion for his 1982 film The State of Things and headed the festival's jury in 2008.
Both his film and Ford's Nocturnal Animals are screen adaptations of written works - the former based on Peter Handke's play Die schÃ¶nen Tage von Aranjuez and the latter being based on Austin Wright's novel Tony and Susan.
Also included in the official selections are Sicario director Daniel Villeneuve's sci-fi drama Arrival; Derek Gianfrance's story of a lighthouse keeper, The Light Between Oceans; and films from directing duos Massimo d'Anolfi and Martina Parenti and Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat.
British director Sam Mendes will head the jury at this year's festival.
Away from the Golden Lion competition, the festival will also debut Nick Hamm's film about the unlikely friendship between the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, The Journey, and Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, which tells the story of a World War Two conscientious objector.
The 73rd Venice International Film Festival will close on 10 September with a showing of Antoine Fuqua's remake of The Magnificent Seven.
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New works from directors Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders and Tom Ford will compete for the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival.