Cinema’s Grand Gathering: Venice Unveils a Lineup Filled With Masters and Mavericks
The 83rd Venice Film Festival lineup has been set, with sensational directors and a slew of stars ready to walk the Lido. Danny Boyle, Werner Herzog, Martin McDonagh, and Florian Zeller are some of the helmers unveiling projects at the festival.
This year’s festival also includes a buzzy rock doc, Don’t Look Back in Anger, which is centered on Oasis’s reunion. Noel and Liam Gallagher are expected to be in Venice for the premiere. The film was produced by Disney and helmed by Peaky Blinders writer/director Steven Knight. Don’t Look Back in Anger is playing in Venice as a special event and will open in IMAX and theaters worldwide on September 11, before streaming exclusively on Hulu and Disney+ later this year.
Venice chief Alberto Barbera said the 2026 selection “bolsters the idea of cinema as an extraordinary tool to understand the real world.” He also noted of the films to be showcased at the festival that “All the biggest problems of contemporary existence are reflected or echoed.”
Barbera added a triumphant note about the state of cinema, too. “To those who are skeptical about the state of cinema, all they have to do is set foot in a movie theatre where they are screening Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey to realize not just that cinema is not on its deathbed, but that it can continuously regenerate itself, continuing to generate epiphanies and miracles of vision.”
Zeller’s back on the Lido with Bunker, his follow-up to The Son, which stars Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz as a real-life couple at a mysterious construction project (the titular bunker), which begins to wreak havoc on their lives.
McDonagh is also returning to Venice after his critically acclaimed Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin both premiered there. He returns with Wild Horse Nine, a dark comedy that follows CIA agents sent from Santiago to Easter Island right before the 1973 Chilean Coup. The starry cast includes Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Parker Posey, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Waits.
Danny Boyle’s Ink will open the in-competition lineup. Set in 1969, the film stars Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch and Jack O’Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor of Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun, and tracks how Murdoch and Lamb built Britain’s most ruthless and read tabloid. The film also stars Claire Foy as Lamb’s fictional wife, Jules Davies, who serves as the paper’s deputy editor.
Lance Oppenheim will be in Venice with his film Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as a journalist who takes on the crime underworld and is forever changed in the process. Pattinson will be on hand and is also a producer on the film alongside Ari Aster.
Herzog is also in competition with Bucking Fastard, which stars sisters Rooney and Kate Mara as twins who search for an imaginary land where true love is possible. In perfect Herzogian fashion, in order to do this, they attempt to dig a tunnel through a mountain range. The film also stars Domhnall Gleeson and Orlando Bloom.
Casey Affleck will also present his gothic mystery Company, starring Nick Nolte, Adelaide Clemens, Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, and Caylee Cowan. The film is set on a winter night in 1975 and involves parallel stories told by an uninvited guest to a holiday party.
Alex Gibney will premiere his Elon Musk documentary Musk, which has been described as an epic investigation into the public persona of the mega mogul.
For the full list of the festival lineup, check out the festival’s official website here.
Featured image: L-r: LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 06: Robert Pattinson attends the world premiere of “The Odyssey” at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on July 06, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images); CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 23: Penélope Cruz attends the closing ceremony of the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 23, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images)
