The 2026 Venice Film Festival got underway on Wednesday, September 2, with Oscar-winning English director Danny Boyle's Ink - starring Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy - kicking off an 83rd edition that includes...
Primary Journalistic Dispatch & Direct Reporting
The 2026 Venice Film Festival got underway on Wednesday, September 2, with Oscar-winning English director Danny Boyle's Ink - starring Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy - kicking off an 83rd edition that includes films starring the likes of Robert Pattinson, Penelope Cruz & Javier Bardem, Jack Huston & Sofia Boutella, Dakota Johnson, John Malkovich & Sam Rockwell, Alicia Vikander & Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and Kate & Rooney Mara in their first movie together.
Along with Ink, this year's competition lineup includes such buzzy titles seeking awards-season glory as Florian Zeller's Bunker, Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, Lance Oppenheim's Primetime , Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love , Andrea Pallaoro's The Echo Chamber , Casey Affleck's Company and Warner Herzog's Bucking Fastard.
Studio titles largely are absent this year, but the overall lineup also includes new films by Luca Guadagnino, Paul Schrader and Wim Wenders along with Laura Poitras' short about ICE protests in Minnesota, and Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace's doc on the comeback of rock band Oasis.
In-Depth Developments & Factual Context
Check out Deadline's reviews out of Venice, and keep checking back as we add more. Click on each headline to read our full review.
Section: Out of Competition Director: Paul Schrader Cast: Jack Huston, Sofia Boutella, Daniel Zovalto, Bill Pullman, Dana Delany, Shiloh Fernandez, Karl Glusman, Elizabeth Petruso, Santiago Cabrera, Trevor Dolden, Richard Gere Deadline's takeaway: With this introspective character study, Schrader continues to making the kind of grownup films we rarely get to see anymore, outside of Europe at least. He never presents easy answers in his movies - same with this deep dive into the philosophy of life and the key question we can ask of many Schrader characters, "Can we change?" - PH
Section: Competition Director-screenwriter: Werner Herzog Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall Gleeson Deadline's takeaway: Although it appears to start with a tone of gentle mockery, there's something quite sweet and generous at work beneath the stylized strangeness of the tale of two sisters played by Rooney and Kate Mara, a tone that Werner Herzog has never really struck before in his fiction work, with the possible exception of 2019's Family Romance LLC . - DW
Industry Impact & Strategic Analysis
Section: Competition Director-screenwriter: Florian Zeller Cast: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, Patrick Schwarzenegger Deadline's takeaway: Florian Zeller casts real-life husband and wife Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in this rich and fascinating film to blur the lines between reality and fiction, using the marriage of their Miguel and Sofia to examine not just the crisis within it but all around them - fear of the future, environmental threats, inequality, individualism, post-pandemic isolation and other themes on the filmmaker's mind. - PH
Section: Competition Director: Casey Affleck Cast: Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Adelaide Clemens, Scott McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan, Atticus Affleck, Indiana Affleck Deadline's takeaway: Ben Affleck as a filmmaker seems most influenced by films in which he starred - his Oscar-winning role in Manchester By the Sea, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and David Lowery's A Ghost Story to cite three that ask us to go with flow, slow down and take it all in. That is how it felt watching Company, a movie that asks us to simply watch and listen, to let it roll over us, and perhaps to discover the meaning of the words we say to each other. - PH
Section: Venice Open - Out Of Competition Director: Barthélémy Grossmann Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Ever Anderson, Al Pacino, Michael Rispoli Deadline's takeaway: Amazingly, Al Pacino is about the only thing that isn't over the top here, generously giving center stage to Kiefer Sutherland in a role that's fun, unbelievable - and sometimes unbelievably funny. Is it any good? Who knows. It's certainly the most balls-out, no-f*cks-given rock 'n' roll phenomenon to hit the Lido this year - DW
Forward Outlook & Market Perspective
Section: Orizzonti Director: Alina Marazzi Cast: Emilia Schüle, Aaron Altaras, Luna Wedler, Lucas Englander, Thomas Schubert, Sebastian Schneider, Idan Weiss, Lia von Blarer, Hans-Christian Hegewald, Jeremy Mockridge, Joel Basman Deadline's takeaway: The jazzed-up, unconventional biopic of the late photojournalist Gerda Taro asks questions about the the fine line between bravery and ego in the process of bringing back dispatches from the front line, but its structure over-complicates a simple yet quite profound meditation on an artist's identity and legacy. - DW
Section: Competition Director: Danny Boyle Cast: Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy, Jonathan Hyde, Lucy Russell, Abigail Amin, Bertie Carvel, Brian Gleeson, Christopher Fulford, Patrick Kennedy, Blake Harrison, Georgie Henley Deadline's takeaway: Danny Boyle with his whip-smart, in-your-face stye is the perfect filmmaker to bring this world set in 1969 London to life as the brash if trash visionary Rupert Murdoch and his hand-picked editor-in-chief launch what would become a new era of tabloid journalism, changing the media world for better or worse in the process. Here all the cylinders are firing, and it is thrilling stuff indeed. - PH
Section: Venice Open - Out of Competition Director: Luca Guadagnino Deadline's takeaway: Luca Guadagnino's 426-minute docu-essay about Italian maestro Bernardo Bertolucci is the endurance test of this year's festival. Surprisingly, however, watched in two sittings, it is less of an ordeal than it might appear, partly thanks to Guadagnino's forthright views. Bertolucci, though, often gets pushed aside by Guadagnino and co., even while the speakers onscreen complain that Bertolucci was often pushed aside as a filmmaker. - DW
Section: Out of Competition Director: Alex Gibney Deadline's takeaway: The documentary, which might be Alex Gibney's most important, depicts the world's richest man as petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel and detached from humans at a personal level while purporting to want to save humanity by colonizing Mars. In other words, it gives Elon the takedown he richly deserves. - MC
Section: Venice Open - Out of Competition Directors: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace With: Liam Gallagher, Noah Gallagher Deadline's takeaway: The great mystery about why Noel and Liam Gallagher put aside their differences for a heavily promoted multimillion-dollar world stadium tour is never really addressed in this more-than-feature-length documentary. Instead, the directors look at what came out of it for the estranged brothers, offering an insider's view one of the most crazily oversubscribed reunion tours of all time. - DW
Section: Competition Director: Lee Chang-dong Cast: Jeon Do-Yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-Jeung Deadline's takeaway: As you might expect from this master filmmaker, the story takes time to develop, and at nearly three hours it takes a little too long here. But the cast of top South Korean actors here is well chosen, and they deliver Lee Chang-dong's vision on the screen in this handsomely filmed and pertinent film. - PH
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