The 83rd Venice International Film Festival will open with a special tribute to George Clooney, who will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement during the festival’s opening ceremony on September 2. Academy Award winner Laura Dern will formally honor Clooney at the ceremony, bringing the two actors together again after their appearance in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, which premiered at Venice in 2025.
The ceremony will take place in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido di Venezia. The 2026 Venice Film Festival runs from September 2 to September 12, with the tribute coming on opening night. Dern is a fitting choice for the honor given her recent collaboration with Clooney and her own long history with the festival.
Clooney’s Golden Lion recognizes a career that has successfully moved between acting, directing and producing. His major television breakthrough came with ER, where he played Dr. Doug Ross before establishing himself as a leading film actor. Ocean’s Eleven cemented his status as a major movie star, while films including Michael Clayton, Up in the Air and The Descendants demonstrated his range as a dramatic performer.
Behind the camera, Clooney has also built a significant filmmaking career. He directed, co-wrote and produced Good Night, and Good Luck., his acclaimed 2005 drama about television journalist Edward R. Murrow. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Directing and Original Screenplay. Clooney later directed The Ides of March, while his producing work on Argo earned him a Best Picture Oscar alongside Grant Heslov and Ben Affleck.
Clooney’s own Oscar history further underlines the breadth of his career. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Syriana at the 2006 ceremony. In 2013, he became the only person to receive Oscar nominations across the lead acting, supporting acting, directing, original screenplay, adapted screenplay and Best Picture categories.
Dern brings an equally distinguished career to the ceremony. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Marriage Story, directed by Baumbach, and has appeared in major films including Jurassic Park and Inland Empire. Her career has moved between large studio productions and filmmaker-driven projects, making her a natural choice to honor an actor whose work has similarly crossed multiple areas of the film industry.
Dern also has a long association with Venice. She previously attended the festival with Haunted Summer in 1988, October Sky in 1998, Dr. T. & the Women in 2000 and Inland Empire in 2006. She returned with Marriage Story and The Son in 2022, while her most recent connection to the festival came through Jay Kelly.
Clooney is one of two recipients of the 2026 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, alongside Ellen Burstyn. He will also participate in a masterclass on September 3, giving festival audiences an opportunity to hear him discuss his career and filmmaking work.
The tribute carries a personal connection as well as career significance. Dern and Clooney have recently shared the screen, both have significant histories with Venice, and both have built careers across different sides of filmmaking. As the festival begins, Dern’s tribute will introduce a Golden Lion celebrating not a single performance or film, but decades of work that have established Clooney as a lasting figure in international cinema.
