The 83rd Venice Film Festival is set to run from September 2 to 12, with its full lineup confirmed by artistic director Alberto Barbera. The festival will open with Danny Boyle’s Ink and close with Giovanni Veronesi’s Dio Ride, both already confirmed ahead of the wider announcement.
‘Ink’ is a 1960s-set drama about the early days of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, centered on his acquisition of the British tabloid ‘The Sun’. The film stars Guy Pearce as Murdoch and Jack O’Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor Murdoch hired to run the paper, with Claire Foy also starring. This marks Boyle’s first time bringing a film to Venice as a director. Netflix has already picked up the film’s US rights.
Dio Ride will close the festival on September 12. It is an Italian period drama directed by Giovanni Veronesi and starring Pierfrancesco Favino, known for his roles in ‘Maria’ and ‘Rush’. The film will have its world premiere after the festival’s awards ceremony that evening.
This year’s competition jury will be led by actress and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, known for The Lost Daughter and The Bride!. She’ll be joined by six fellow jurors: Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, composer Daniel Blumberg, film scholar Francesco Casetti, French director Xavier Giannoli, Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, and Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To. Together, they’ll decide the festival’s top honors, including the Golden Lion for Best Film, the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, and the Coppa Volpi acting awards.
Venice will also present honorary Golden Lion awards for lifetime achievement to George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn this year. George Clooney is a longtime presence at the festival, while Ellen Burstyn is one of the most respected actresses of her generation, known for her decades-spanning career on screen.
Much like Cannes earlier this year, which didn’t feature a single studio-backed film for the first time in decades, Venice also has a somewhat lighter Hollywood presence in 2026. Some major titles that had been floated for a possible Lido premiere, including Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ and Ridley Scott’s ‘The Dog Stars’, ruled themselves out ahead of the festival, both having opted for earlier theatrical releases instead.
Last year’s festival offered a mixed bag when it came to awards season payoff. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was the standout, earning nine Academy Award nominations and winning three, while Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia also picked up multiple nominations. On the other hand, several high-profile premieres, including Benny Safdie’s ‘The Smashing Machine’, Noah Baumbach’s ‘Jay Kelly’, and Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘A House of Dynamite’, failed to gain real traction during the rest of the season. Kaouther Ben Hania’s ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’, which won Venice’s Silver Lion last year, went on to earn an Oscar nomination but lost to Joachim Trier’s ‘Sentimental Value’.
The confirmed competition lineup includes Martin McDonagh’s ‘Wild Horse Nine’, starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Waits; Werner Herzog’s ‘Bucking Fastard’, starring sisters Rooney and Kate Mara; and Florian Zeller’s ‘Bunker’, led by Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. One of the biggest surprises is ‘Primetime’, documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s narrative feature debut, starring Robert Pattinson as television personality Chris Hansen. Casey Affleck’s ‘Company’, with Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn, and Lee Chang-dong’s ‘Possible Love’, his first feature since 2018’s ‘Burning’, also lead the selection.
Nanni Moretti returns to Venice for the first time since 1989 with Succederà Questa Notte, while Paul Schrader’s The Basics of Philosophy and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, starring Geoffrey Rush, round out more of the competition slate. The wider lineup also includes new work from acclaimed filmmakers Julia Loktev, Tsai Ming-liang, Lav Diaz, Laura Poitras, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Mariano Llinás, alongside a run of Italian titles including Gianni Amelio’s ‘Nessun Dolore’, Mario Martone’s ‘Scherzetto’, and Paolo Strippoli’s ‘L’Estranea’.
The festival’s documentary slate is unusually packed this year, headlined by Alex Gibney’s four-hour Elon Musk documentary ‘Musk’, along with ‘Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger’, a film on the Gallagher brothers, and Russell Crowe’s ‘What Love Builds’, centered on his music career.
Several previously rumored titles did not make the final lineup, including Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Social Reckoning’, David Fincher’s ‘The Adventures of Cliff Booth’, and a narrative feature from Luca Guadagnino, though Guadagnino will still be at the festival with a seven-hour documentary on filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
With a starry jury, two confirmed bookend films, and a competition lineup now locked in, Venice’s 83rd edition looks set to once again play a major role in shaping the road to the Oscars.
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