Which movies should you watch at the 2026 Venice Film Festival? The Loud and Clear Reviews writers recommend 30 films, from anticipated premieres to hidden gems!
The 2026 Venice Film Festival is about to start, and it’s time to think of what movies to watch at the Lido this year. The lineup is out, and even though many have noticed a lack of huge names and big Hollywood productions, there’s still much to be excited about. Each section – from the Competition and Out of Competition (now called Venice Open) strands to Orizzonti, Spotlight, Critics’ Week, Venice Days, and Venice Immersive – has several films we can’t wait to watch, in a festival that is bound to surprise us in many ways.
Venezia 83 will take place at Venice Lido on September 1 – 12, a little later compared to previous years. As always, the calendar will be available around August 10, and tickets will go on sale shortly after. To help you decide which films to add to your watchlist, we made a list of recommendations. They include all strands, with several high profile movies and many lesser known gems, and they were picked by our writers Hayley Croke, Jack Walters, and Serena Seghedoni, who’ll be at the Lido this year. Here are 30 movies to watch at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, in alphabetical order! See you there!
1. Bucking Fastard
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall Gleeson
Countries: Ireland, United States
Coming off last year’s honor of receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Werner Herzog is returning to Lido to premiere his latest feature, Bucking Fastard. The German writer and director, known for his role as a pioneer of New German Cinema and fearless approach to storytelling, presents one of his most ambitious features yet.
Bucking Fastard follows two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Kate and Rooney Mara), who are so close they seem to have morphed into one soul that operates two separate bodies. The sisters share the same looks, dreams and love life, even going as far as to speak in unison with one another. In an attempt to find a land where true love can exist, as they have deemed it impossible for it to do so in their world, they dig a tunnel through a mountain range in hopes of discovering a more pure place.
From the first released clip of the film, it’s clear this is going to be one of the most interesting stories to grace screens this year. While the Mara sisters speak in unison, they deliver two entirely different yet equally nuanced performances. While both of the Mara sisters have performed with their husbands in projects before, this marks their first joint creative project and most certainly will test the strength of their abilities to perform with familiar scene partners in an entirely new light. (Hayley Croke)
2. Bunker
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Florian Zeller
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, Patrick Schwarzenegger
Countries: France, Spain
This year’s festival is shaping up to be a family affair, with many creative collaborations between a number of siblings and marital partners gracing the silver screen. One of the most hotly anticipated features is Florian Zeller’s Bunker, which was written specifically for the internationally acclaimed spouses Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.
Bunker follows an architect (Bardem) who accepts a morally grey project building a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. While watching her husband work, his wife (Cruz) begins to question the 17 years they have spent together in this marriage. Zeller said he specifically wanted to have the lead character portrayed by a real-life married couple and that Bardem and Cruz were the first actors to come to mind.
This marks the couple’s sixth on-screen collaboration with one another, starring alongside Stephen Graham, hot off the tour de force Netflix show Adolescence, and arthouse darling Paul Dano. This is Zeller’s third feature film and second time premiering a film at Venice following his 2022 presentation of The Son. (Hayley Croke)
3. Company
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Casey Affleck
Cast: Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelssohn, Adelaide Clemens
Countries: United States, Canada
Casey Affleck returns to the Venice Film Festival this year with Company, his latest directorial effort starring Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelssohn. The story reportedly follows three separate characters across multiple generations, whose takes are woven together by a mysterious traveller. The project is described by the Biennale as “a meditation on grief, grace, and the quiet power of human connection.”
Affleck previously attended the Venice Film Festival in 2010 with I’m Still Here, a unique mockumentary starring Joaquin Phoenix. Since then, his only appearances in Venice have been as an actor, though his directorial career continued in 2019 with the critically divisive Light of My Life. (Jack Walters)
4. Everest: The Other Side
Out of Competition – Non-Fiction
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
Countries: United States, China, Nepal
In 2018, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin gave us Free Solo, which would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Chronicling free soloist climber Alex Honnold’s attempt to climb Yosemite National Park’s 3,200ft El Capitan with no ropes, the film achieved huge recognition not only for the subject itself, but for the many stories it told, and how.
Capturing every step of Honnold’s potentially deadly mission while giving us a glimpse of his personal life, Free Solo acts as both a fascinating look into the psyche of a man who does unthinkable things for reasons even he doesn’t fully comprehend, and an incredibly tense, high stakes analysis of risk itself. On top of that, Free Solo is also shot extremely well, with the filmmaking crew, including Chin himself, taking an active role and becoming actual characters in the film itself, adding an extra layer of commentary on the purpose and ethics of documentary filmmaking.
Since then, Vasarhelyi and Chin also gave us Nyad (2023), but with Everest: The Other Side, they return to the kind of filmmaking we’ve seen not only in Free Solo, but also in the critically acclaimed Meru (2015), the edge-of-your-seat The Rescue (2021), and more projects. This time, they film elite ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson as they try to achieve their lifelong dream of climbing and skiing the North Face of Mount Everest, a feat that no one, to date, has been able to complete. We’ll be seated. (Serena Seghedoni)
5. Father Joe
Out of Competition – Fiction
Director: Barthélémy Grossmann
Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Ever Anderson, Al Pacino
Country: France
Barthélémy Grossmann is bringing one of the few action thrillers that will be screened at this year’s Venice Film Festival. In the Luc Besson-written Father Joe, Kiefer Sutherland stars as a ruthless priest who declares war on the criminal underworld of New York City, bringing him into conflict with several dangerous mob bosses unwilling to let his faith crusade bring down their profitable businesses.
Grossmann is best known as the director of 2022’s Arthur: Malediction, which received incredibly polarizing reviews from critics. This will mark his first time attending the Venice Film Festival, and his first major production with an A-list cast. (Jack Walters)
6. Flesh Impact
Out of Competition – Short Film
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, Sepideh Moafi
Country: United States
At the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Maggie Gyllenhaal finds herself on double duty, acting as the President of the International Jury for the main competition as well as debuting her latest short film, Flesh Impact.
Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn star as different versions of Marilyn Monroe. The film opens on a mysterious older woman auditioning at a small blackbox theater in New York City. While describing her qualifications and experiences in the entertainment industry, familiar details begin to surface as well as misconceptions that have haunted her throughout her career.
Johnson plays Monroe at the height of her fame while Burstyn depicts the actress at an age she never lived to see. The project honors the icon on the heels of her hundredth birthday, highlighting how her spirit and essence continue to influence today’s film audience.
Flesh Impact’s premiere will not be one to miss, as it will double as the ceremony where Ellen Burstyn’s will be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for her long and illustrious career. (Hayley Croke)
7. From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor
Out of Competition – Non-Fiction
Director: Wim Wenders
Countries: Germany, Switzerland
While you might recognize Wim Wenders’ name for critically acclaimed narrative features like Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987), and Perfect Days (2023), the filmmaker has also given us many fantastic documentaries, from the personal Tokyo-Ga (1985) the Oscar-nominated Buena Vista Social Club (1999), to the recently released Pina (2011) and Anselm (2023), where the director employed 3D to explore the life and work of the films’ respective subjects.
This year, the filmmaker brings a project to Venice that was nearly 15 years in the making, exploring the work of renowned Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Wender famously described Zumthor as “the architect’s architect”, explaining that “if you ever ask one of the great ones who would you be in another life, the answer is inevitable: I would love to be Peter Zumthor”. The documentary was made with advanced 3D technology
– “because architecture needs it,” according to Wenders – and mainly focusing on two Zumthor projects: the new LACMA Museum building in Los Angeles, and the expansion of the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland.
The official Biennale synopsis mentions the film’s immersive approach, explaining that it presents the architecture “through the eyes of visitors, users, inhabitants or craftspeople,” ultimately leaving viewers with “an understanding of how architecture influences our perception of the world and how it shapes our lives”. This theme, and architecture’s relationship with our existential needs, seems to run through much of his work, and this makes us even more excited about this project. (Serena Seghedoni)
8. Ink
Venezia 83: In Competition, Opening Film
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy
Country: United Kingdom
This year, the honour of opening the Venice Film Festival has gone to Danny Boyle, whose new film Ink will have its world premiere on the opening night. The film centers around the creation of The Sun newspaper by Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb, which Boyle describes as a “cheeky, irreverent, and daring” story about the biggest selling newspaper in the world.
Ink will mark Boyle’s first film to have its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, despite attending the Biennale several times before. The filmmaker’s most recent works include 28 Years Later, Pistol, and Yesterday. (Jack Walters)
9. Joie de Vivre
Out of Competition – Films on Films
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Country: Italy
Luca Guadagnino is set to grace the island of Lido once again, this time with one of his most ambitious and personal projects to date. At this year’s festival, Guadagnino will debut his seven-hour documentary tribute film, centered around his cinematic hero, Bernardo Bertolucci. It promises to serve as the ultimate in-depth look at one of cinema’s most quintessential auteurs, whose work has inspired several classes of film’s finest working storytellers, Guadagnino being a pupil of the colloquial school of Bertolucci himself.
It seems kismet that Guadagnino will debut his unabridged tribute to his hero the same year that Bertolucci’s final screenplay, The Echo Chamber (directed by Andrea Pallaoro), will find its way to audiences for the first time. It serves as the perfect reminder that if you are looking for how Bertolucci’s work and legacy lives on in the modern age of cinema, you quite literally will not need to look far. (Hayley Croke)
10. Jupiter
Out of Competition – Fiction
Director: Alexandre Smia
Cast: Denis Ménochet, André Dussollier, Reda Kateb
Country: France
Jupiter is Alexandre Smia’s debut appearance at the Venice Film Festival. Denis Ménochet stars as the freshly elected President of France who is forced to make an impossible decision when an allied country finds itself the target of an escalating nuclear threat.
Smia previously directed last year’s 13 Days, 13 Nights, a powerful war drama that follows a group of US troops who must reach Kabul Airport to escape Afghanistan before the Taliban reclaim power. Jupiter promises to bring a similar narrative intensity, packed with palpable tension and intense moral dilemmas. (Jack Walters)
11. Look Back
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Cast: Natsuki Deguchi, Aju Makita, Furi Nanase, Rokka Okada, Masaki Suda, Kankuro Kudo, Kayo Noro
Country: Japan
Remember Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s animated film Look Back, based on the 2021 one-shot manga of the same name and revolving around the friendship and creative partnership between to classmates? Hirokazu Koreeda brings us the live action adaptation, and given the Japanese filmmaker’s talent for crafting intimate stories about the families we’re born into, the families we find, and the everyday complexities of human existance, we couldn’t be more excited.
Look Back tells the story of outgoing, determined manga artist Fujino, whose life eventually collides with the reclusive Kyomoto, who’s just as talented but who hardly ever leaves her room. As the two girls bond over their shared passion, they pursue their dreams together, and we follow this relationship evolve over the course of thirteen years. (Serena Seghedoni)
12. L’Estranea (The Spiral)
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Paolo Strippoli
Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Adriano Giannini, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
Countries: Italy, France, Belgium
Coming off his 2025 debut in the Out of Competition section, Paolo Strippoli is back at the 83rd Venice Film Festival with his first foray into the Competition section with L’Estranea. Strippoli, a young Italian filmmaker from Corato, Puglia, Italy, has been making a splash both writing and directing feature-length and short films for the past several years.
L’Estranea revolves around a mother showing up to her daughter’s apartment in the midst of a storm to confess a deep secret she has been holding about their family at large. This secret contains the dark truth about their family’s foundation and revealing it threatens to dissolve their bond entirely, but it’s also the only way to keep them together.
Strippoli has been hailed as Italy’s resident modern horror filmmaking connoisseur after making waves with his debut film A Classic Horror Story. With the recent insurmountable success of horror filmmakers like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, could L’Estranea and Strippoli be Italy’s answer to this emerging class of horror genre superstars? (Hayley Croke)
13. Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People?
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Cast: Rodney Hicks, Geoffrey Rush, Mark Merphy, Tatyana Ali, Lily Franky
Countries: Japan, United States, Thailand, Vietnam
Rodney Hicks (Mighty Oak) plays Allen Nelson in the film adaptation of Nelson’s own account of the Vietnam War, where he explored his wartime experiences, and the difficulties he encountered upon his return. Director, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor Shinya Tsukamoto, of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), has brought many films to the Venice Film Festival – including the Orizzonti-winning Kotoko (2011), Killing (2018), and Shadow of Fire (2023) – and returns this year with a very promising and ambitious project.
The Biennale’s synopsis explains the film looks at “the wounds of those who perpetrated war,” asking people “what war is” by analysing the consequences of wartime atrocities and the effects of PTSD. Geoffrey Rush also stars in one of the most timely premieres at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. (Serena Seghedoni)
14. Musk
Out of Competition – Non-Fiction
Director: Alex Gibney
Country: United States
Musk is 232 minutes long, but that doesn’t mean you should skip it. It comes from documentarian Alex Gibney, who brought us the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and many acclaimed films, including Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019), and Citizen K (2019), which was screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival.
This year, Gibney returns to the Lido with a film that explores the influence of oligarch Elon Musk, and that Musk himself has already called “a hit piece” on X. Since Gibney’s documentaries tend to explore contemporary politics and dynamics through their subject matters, our expectations are high. (Serena Seghedoni)
15. My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile
Out of Competition – Non-Fiction
Director: Julia Loktev
Country: United States
When Julia Loktev‘s documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow hit the festival circuit last year, it earned universal acclaim for its candid, high-stakes look at independent Russian journalism. Filmed by Loktev herself with no additional crew, the film chronicled young independent Russian female journalists facing their country’s absurd attitudes towards them after the invasion of Ukraine. The film went on to win several awards, including a Gotham Award, a Spirit Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award, and was even shortlisted to the Oscars.
This year, Loktev returns with Part II, which documents the the same journalists as they flee Putin’s Russia, chronicling their lives across Europe and their moral struggles. Though the film is 355 minutes long, we have a feeling it will keep your eyes glued to the screen for the entire time. (Serena Seghedoni)
16. Our Share of Sand
Critics’ Week
Director: Shalini Adnani
Cast: Maya Mehta, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Ellora Torchia, Krish Raj More, Ravi Ranjan, Jyoti Dogra
Countries: India, United Kingdom, Greece
12-year-old Maya returns to India with her mother to reunite with her father after many years apart in the new film from Shalini Adnani, the Chilean-Indian, London-based filmmaker behind the BIFA-longlisted, Raindance-winning short White Ant. In Our Share of Sand, her feature debut, Maya forms a bond with a young worker named Kiran. But a tragic accident turns Maya into a witness, and her testimony will decide her own father’s fate. Maya star searching for the truth, while her mother unravels, and is ultimately forced to face her father’s deception and the family’s complicity in it.
Our Share of Sand doesn’t sound like an easy story to watch, but it feels like a necessary one with a lot to say about women, family relations, justice, responsibility, and legacy. It’s the most interesting project at Critics’ Week, and we wouldn’t miss it. (Serena Seghedoni)
17. Peau d’Homme
Venice Days, Closing Film
Director: Léa Domenach
Cast: Claire Pommet, Catherine Deneuve, Karin Viard, Stefan Crépon, Louis Peres
Country: France
The Closing Film at this year’s Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori) is a queer, feminist musical comedy adapted from the acclaimed comic book of the same name, with Catherine Deneuve and French singer-songwriter Pomme in the cast. Need we say more?
Léa Domenach’s Peau d’Homme (A Man’s Skin), produced in partnership with Disney+, HBO Max and France Télévisions, takes place around 1480, when a princess is getting ready to wed a charming prince. But just like that, her father decides to have her marry a coarse army commander instead. This prompts our protagonist to consult her godmother, who gives her a mysterious “skin” which, once worn, will allow the princess to become a man get to know her unaware fiancé. Count us in! (Serena Seghedoni)
18. Place to Be
Out of Competition – Fiction
Director: Kornél Mundruczó
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson
Country: Australia
Mundruczó first attended the Venice Film Festival in 2020 with his emotional drama Pieces of a Woman, which ultimately pushed Vanessa Kirby to her first Oscar nomination in Best Actress. The Hungarian director returns this year with Place to Be, another drama where Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi star as two unlikely friends who undertake a long journey from Chicago to New York to return a lost racing pigeon home.
Mundruczó’s last film, At The Sea, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year to mixed responses. Before that, he’s best known as one of the directors of Apple TV’s The Crowded Room, where Tom Holland starred as a young man under investigation for a shocking crime. (Jack Walters)
19. Possible Love
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong
Country: South Korea
Two married couples — a worker who’s just lost his job, a documentary filmmaker, and their respective spouses — cross paths to film a documentary and come face to face with their existences and hidden desires in Possible Love (Ga-neung-han sa-rang), Lee Chang-dong’s first feature film since Burning (2018), which also marks his return to Venice 24 years after the Special Director’s Award-winning Oasis (2002).
Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine), Sul Kyung-gu (Peppermint Candy), Cho Yeo-jeong (Parasite) and Zo In-sung (Escape from Mogadishu) star in this Netflix production, one of the most anticipated premieres at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. (Serena Seghedoni)
20. Primetime
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Lance Oppenheim
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Anna Faris, Alex Winter
Countries: United States
This A24 production is inspired by the true story of American investigative reporter Chris Hansen, who created a reality show in the 2000s with the aim of attracting and unmasking pedophiles. “To Catch a Predator” became a sensation and skyrocketed Hansen to stardom, leading to many arrests, but also, eventually, to the presenter’s downfall.
Lance Oppenheim, of Some Kind of Heaven and The Happiest Guy in the World, directs a film that sets to explore the line between journalism and entertainment, a theme that couldn’t be more relevant. Robert Pattinson, also on producing duties, stars in a role that seems tailor-made for him, with Merritt Wever (Marriage Story), Phoebe Bridgers (I Saw the TV Glow), Anna Faris (Scary Movie) and Alex Winter (Bill & Ted Face the Music) also attached to the project. Not to be missed. (Serena Seghedoni)
21. Serpenti
Spotlight
Director: Roberto De Paolis Maino
Cast: Leonardo Lidi, Alessandro Borghi, Pietro Castellitto, Valeria Golino
Country: Italy
If you’re looking for a promising hidden gem to watch at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, Serpenti might be it. Co-written by director Roberto De Paolis Maino (Pure Hearts) and the D’Innocenzo brothers (Bad Tales, America Latina), the film revolves around a man who kills his wife without knowing why, and immediately goes to the police to confess, feeling guilty. But to his surprise, no one arrests him, due to the absurdities of Italian bureaucracy. Our protagonist is trapped in a kafkaesque nightmare in an allegorical tale that festival director Alberto Barbera calls “surreal, grotesque, thought-provoking, and enthralling.” We’re sold. (Serena Seghedoni)
22. The Basics of Philosophy
Out of Competition – Fiction
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Jack Huston, Sofia Boutella, Bill Pullman
Country: United States
Paul Schrader, who first rose to fame as the screenwriter of Martin Scorsese classics like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, returns to the Venice Film Festival this year with The Basics of Philosophy. Jack Huston stars as a troubled professor in a small-town college who descends into a spiritual crisis when a figure from his past presents itself.
Schrader’s films have been a staple of recent Biennale installments, with The Card Counter, First Reformed, and Master Gardener all holding their world premieres at the festival. Schrader was also presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2022, so it’s no surprise he’s back with his latest project this year. (Jack Walters)
23. The Burning Giants
Orizzonti
Director: Phuttiphong Aroonpheng
Cast: Awat Ratanapintha, Pakapol Srirongmuang, Thanatwut Rodpai
Countries: Thailand, France, Singapore, Netherlands
Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, of Manta Ray, returns to the Venice Film Festival with a fascinating dystopian movie that sees a mysterious toxic smog infect the Keren Mountain people, an ethnic minority in Thailand, provoking a bizarre skin condition that makes them look as if they were being burned by an invisible fire. Thinking strategically, the government’s forest marshals burn down their villages, aiming to build a new National Park to replace it, which leaves the Mountain people homeless. The Burning Giants follows a Keren migrant woman working as a nanny in Bangkok, who hears of a lone mountainman captured in the mountains and embarks on a journey with her daughter, hoping that man is her lost husband.
This mystical story from the critically acclaimed Thai director sets out to explore very real and timely themes, and the story itself is so original that we can’t wait to watch it for ourselves. (Serena Seghedoni)
24. The Difficult Bride
Orizzonti
Director: Rubaiyat Hossain
Cast: Zaineen Chowdhury Karim, Rikita Nondine Shimu, Sunerah Binte Kamal, Azmeri Haque, Dameer Khan, Saberi Alam, Shatabdi Wadud, Mohammed Bari
Countries: France, Bangladesh, Portugal, Norway, Germany
Acclaimed Bangladeshi director Rubaiyat Hossain made many people talke with her award-winning debut feature Meherjaan (2011), which explored war, violence, and masculinity in the country from the point of view of a woman. The director’s new film, The Difficult Bride, is a feminist supernatural drama set in contemporary Dhaka, where the rituals to prepare a bride-to-be for her dream wedding lead her to becoming aware of the prison in which she’s trapped. A very promising project indeed. (Serena Seghedoni)
25. The Echo Chamber
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Andrea Pallaoro
Cast: Luca Marinelli, Alicia Vikander, Susan Sarandon
Countries: Italy, Belgium
Director Andrea Pallaoro (Monica) takes a massive creative leap in attempting to bring legendary Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay to audiences. Before Bertolucci’s death in 2018, he co-wrote what would be his last story with the help of collaborators Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi.
The Echo Chamber is a labyrinth of a love story where the boundaries between love and obsession blur into oblivion. Anne (Alicia Vikander) and Leo (Luca Marinelli) fall in and out of one another’s lives, unable to break their undeniable bond or tear away from their destructive cycle. Guided by the many voices of the omnipresent Ava (Susan Sarandon), the couple attempts to come to a resolution in their deeply intertwined lives.
With the help of core cast members Marinelli, Vikander and Sarandon, as well as Bertolucci’s original co-writers, Bernardini and Rampoldi, Pallaoro will screen his deeply beloved predecessor’s work at Venice, breathing new life into this historied piece. (Hayley Croke)
26. They’re Here
Out of Competition – Short Film
Directors: Laura Poitras and Rachel Muller
Country: United States
Producer and director Laura Poitras, of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) and Cover-Up (2025), and producer, director, investigative journalist and cinematographer Rachel Lauren Mueller co-direct They’re Here, a film that’s only twenty-five minutes long but that has a lot to say. It all takes place in Minneapolis, where residents are resisting ICE‘s paramilitary occupation. The film tells a dystopian tale where children are abducted, citizens travel in trunks, prisoners are put into airplanes while tourists are vacationing, and residents monitor and try to escape an invasion. The Biennale’s synopsis describes it as a “horror film”, and given the timely subject, it’s a must-watch. (Serena Seghedoni)
27. Tijuana, Todavía
Biennale College Cinema
Director: Gabriel Gutierrez Morales
Cast: Humberto Busto, Petr Filimonov, Miry Rodríguez, Dilan Rivera, Elliot Roy Rensky, Jorge Dominguez Cerdá
Country: Mexico
The Biennale College Cinema is an often overlooked strand that deserves more attention, and this year the project that caught ours the most is Tijuana, Todavía, from director Gabriel Gutierrez Morales. The film revolves around two different men – a young queer man fleeing Russia to avoid conscription in the Ukraine war, and a middle-aged gay man confronting Northern Mexican machismo – who meet through a gay hookup app with their digital alter egos. When they meet in person, they find out that they’re not so different after all.
Tijuana, Todavía would seem to explore themes of identity, masculinity, sexuality, exile, and cultural belonging, and we can’t wait to find out more. (Serena Seghedoni)
28. Too Much Sugar
Orizzonti
Director: Robert Greene
Cast: Ryan Holliger, Michael Midgyett, Amanda Sanner, Gavin Jones, Wayde Holliger, Bonnie Holliger, Hank Holliger, Tray Martin, Candy Woods, Ashley Long, Auveon Jackson
Country: United States
A charismatic Missouri father of six and his rapper best friend try to make the film that all family members would like to make, which eventually evolves into their real lives in a journey of loss and healing, in the latest documentary film from director Robert Greene, returning to Venice after Pavements. With the kind of filmmaking we’re used to seeing from Greene and a story that blends truth and fiction tackling grief, family, trauma, and fatherhood, we couldn’t be more excited. (Serena Seghedoni)
29. Wild Horse Nine
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell, John Malkovitch
Countries: United States, United Kingdom, Chile
Martin McDonagh, appearing for the fourth time at the event, will bring his latest dark comedy to this year’s Venice Film Festival. Wild Horse Nine centers around a group of CIA agents who are sent to the remote paradise Easter Island, where they must reckon with their dark pasts and growing professional discomfort.
McDonagh first attended the Venice Film Festival in 2017 with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which took home the Golden Osella award for Best Screenplay – and later found huge success at the Oscars. He repeated this process in 2022 with The Banshees of Inisherin, so it’s safe to say expectations are high for Wild Horse Nine (Jack Walters)
30. Woman Unknown (Kvinde Ukendt)
Venezia 83: In Competition
Director: May el-Toukhy
Cast: Mathilde Arcel, Carsten Bjørnlund, Thorbjørn Hedegaard, Marina Bouras, Mia Plantin, Sofia Nolsøe, Flora Sanders
Countries: Denmark, Sweden, Latvia
Woman Unknown marks director and co-writer May el-Toukhy’s Venice Film Festival debut. Notably, el-Toukhy is the only female director to have a film in the main competition at this year’s festival. el-Toukhy and co-writer Maren Louise Käehne have collaborated on several projects together and are known for their aptitude for exploring morally complex central questions through their scripts.
Woman Unknown takes place in May of 1945 and centers on Marie, a young housemaid who is about to marry a wealthy widower she formerly was employed by. She is in the midst of planning an elaborate dinner party to celebrate their engagement when a secret from her past threatens to resurface. With this secret having the power to ruin the social status she is trying so desperately to cement, she must ask what lengths she will go to in order to stop it from emerging.
May el-Toukhy and Maren Louise Käehne’s story weighs social status against morality, class against survival and the present against the past in what is sure to be one of the festival’s most interesting period pieces. (Hayley Croke)
2026 Venice Film Festival – More Movies to Watch at Venezia 83:
- 15/18 (A Place to Heal), Cédric Kahn – In Competition
- Arrested Memory, Sabu – Out of Competition
- Back to Buenos Aires, Marco Bechis – In Competition
- Big Little Things, Michelle Tong Zhou – Orizzonti
- Dau, Ilya Khrzhanovsky – In Competition
- Furies, Rami Kodeih – Venice Spotlight
- God Laughs, Giovanni Veronesi – Out of Competition, Closing Film
- Imperium, Sergei Lonitza – Out of Competition, Non Fiction
- Il Fuoco che ti Porti Dentro, Edoardo De Angelis – In Competition
- It Will Happen Tonight, Nanni Moretti – In Competition
- Kami Nour, Ali Asgari – In Competition
- No Paradise If You Are Killed By a Woman, Halkawt Mustafa – Out of Competition
- Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger, Dylan Southern & Will Lovelace – Out of Competition, Non Fiction
- Paper Plane, Saoirse Ronan – Orizzonti (Short Film)
- Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki, Takashi Miike – Out of Competition, Non Fiction
- Trick, Mario Martone – Out of Competition
- Un Bon Avocat, Tristan Seguela – Out of Competition
- Un Bon Petit Soldat, Stephane Brizé – In Competition
- What Love Builds, Russell Crowe – Out of Competition, Non Fiction
The 2026 Venice Film festival will take place at Lido di Venezia on September 1 – 12, 2026. Read the full festival lineup and come back soon for our reviews!