The 83rd Venice International Film Festival unveiled its full lineup.
Normally, when you see lineups, they are long lists. What we do that is different is break down the most important titles, and organize them in categories that are more intuitive, so it is easy for you to get the most important information:
Cover Story that breaks down the top films at the festival… and which films at last year’s Venice festival broke through.
Venice Industry News, which breaks out top distributors.
Venice Actor Spotlight, highlighting the top talent at the festival.
Venice Indie Filmmaker Spotlight, showcasing first and second-time filmmakers.
Venice International News, showing the top international filmmakers at Venice.
If you know anyone that we mention, we’d appreciate you forwarding it to them.
Below is the full breakdown:
Venice 2026 has films directed by Danny Boyle, Werner Herzog, Jimmy Chin, Martin McDonagh, and Russell Crowe. And films starring Guy Pearce, Kate Mara, John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Robert Pattinson, Rooney Mara, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ellen Burstyn, Pamela Anderson, and Kiefer Sutherland.
In the past 12 years, many of the films at Venice have ended up winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards (Gravity, Birdman, The Shape of Water, Roma, Nomadland), with Roma and Nomadland also winning Venice’s first-place award, the Golden Lion.
Venice 2025 didn’t have any box office breakouts, but many of the films were nominated for Oscars and Emmys:
Bugonia
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
4 Oscar Nominations
$43.5M worldwide
Frankenstein
3 Oscars Won (Production Design, Costume Design, HMU)
9 Oscar Nominations
No Other Choice
Didn’t get the Oscar nomination it had hoped for but was critically acclaimed and made $40.2M worldwide
Ghost Elephants
1 Emmy Nomination (Best Narrator: Herzog)
The Voice of Hind Rajab
1 Oscar Nomination (Best International Film)
Of course, everyone is hoping for something closer to Venice 2024, which had The Brutalist, Babygirl and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ($452M WW).
Venice 2025 Golden Lion winner, Father Mother Sister Brother, did little business for Mubi domestically, earning $964K. However, it did much better internationally with $7.3M.
Will the Venice 2026 lineup snag an Oscar Best Picture win or at least a nomination?
Here are the highest-profile projects rolling into Venice this year, all in competition, destined for awards/high box office returns. Hopefully, though, they’re just really good cinema!
Bucking Fastard
Dir: Werner Herzog
Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall Gleeson
Synopsis:
Jean and Joan Holbrooke are two sisters who are so close they speak in unison, love the same man, and have the same dreams. In search of an imaginary land - where true love is possible - they start digging through an entire mountain range.
Herzog directing the Maras in their first film where they share screen time? Sign us up! There’s a meta-ness about it that fits in with Herzog’s wildly rebellious style. Bloom will play the sisters’ rowdy ex-lover. It was offered a spot at Cannes in a non-competitive category, so Herzog declined.
Dir: Danny Boyle (Trainspotting)
Cast: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy
Producers: Tessa Ross (Conclave, Carol)
US/LATAM Distributor: Netflix
EUR Distributor: StudioCanal
Synopsis:
In 1969, as a rising media tycoon acquires the daily newspaper "The Sun," his partnership with editor Larry Lamb turns the paper into Britain's most influential tabloid.
There is a direct line from his movie, about two young newspaper owners, to the modern media landscape. I saw the opening scene at CinemaCon, and Boyle uses a unique cinematic style, so this will be a very dynamic take.
Wild Horse Nine
Dir: Martin McDonagh
Cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Parker Posey
Distributor: Searchlight
Release: Nov 6
Synopsis:
CIA agents Chris and Lee face a trust-testing mission from Santiago to Easter Island during 1973 in Chile.
McDonagh’s absurdist tendencies cut deeper than any other working filmmaker because there is a visceral way in which he melds comedy and drama, where there is almost no difference between the two. Wild Horse Nine, set in a land of odd yet sacred idols, could push his philosophy even further.
Primetime
Dir: Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven)
Cast: Robert Pattinson
Distributor: A24
Release: Nov 6
Synopsis:
In 2006, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen (Pattinson) sets out to make television history.
We love this role for Pattinson because it allows him to play in both territories in which he excels: the slimy self-confident protagonist, as demonstrated so well in Tenet (2020) and Good Time (2017), while also delving into the more twisted ethical territory that his recent films occupy like A24’s The Drama, where he must reckon with the newfound information that his soon-to-be wife (Zendaya) is so twisted it may be beyond repair.
Bunker
Dir: Florian Zeller (The Father)
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, Patrick Schwarzenegger
Distributor: Sony
Synopsis:
Follows a married couple of 17 years. The husband is an architect who accepts a controversial project to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. This decision leads his wife to question their marriage after 17 years together.
Zeller wrote the film for Cruz and Bardem, who have been married 17 years. This marks their 5th film together after Jamón Jamón (1992), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Loving Pablo (2017), and Everybody Knows (2018).
Zeller’s The Father twists Anthony Hopkins’ relationship with his daughter(s) through scenes that both stabilize and destabilize him; it’s brilliant. We look forward to how Zeller mines Bardem and Cruz’s marriage for similar fractures.
Congrats to all the filmmakers.
THE VENICE INDUSTRY NEWS
The narrative is that indie and studio distributors shied away from Venice this year. But we found that wasn’t the case. Last year there were 12 studio films (including A24 and Neon). This year there are 10 studio films.
Warner Bros. is still reeling post-Joker 2, so no films at the festival. They do, however, have two things on HBO; one is Bleecker Street’s Alex Gibney Elon Musk doc, which is heading to HBO after it plays theatrically. And the other is an Italian TV show.
Here’s a breakdown:
Netflix - 2 films in competition
Ink directed by Danny Boyle
Possible Love
Dir: Lee Chang-dong (Burning starring Steven Yeun)
Synopsis:
A story of two married couples — a laid-off worker and his spouse, and a documentary filmmaker and her spouse — crossing paths to film a documentary and facing their different lives and hidden desires.
Disney - 3 films: 2 out-of-competition docs, 1 Venezia Spotlight
Disney’s Don't Look Back in Anger
Dir: Dylan Southern (The Thing With Feathers), Will Lovelace
Creator/Writer: Steven Knight
Synopsis:
Experience the meteoric rise of Oasis through rare footage and untold stories as the band reunites for Oasis Live '25, chronicling their journey from Manchester streets to global rock stardom.
National Geographic’s Everest: The Other Side
Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, Nyad)
Synopsis:
An intimate portrait of two people bound by love, ambition, and the pursuit of the impossible. Elite ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson fell deeply in love while reaching the pinnacle of their sport: Everest's north face.
ESPN Films’ Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing (Venezia Spotlight)
Synopsis:
Rare inside look at Japan's private sumo world. Through one turbulent year, wrestlers at various career stages struggle to survive in this punishing tradition. Beyond the spectacle, true strength lies in spirit, not flesh.
HBO - 1 show, out of competition
Peccato
Synopsis:
Mockumentary comedy series that finds Emanuela Fanelli in the year 2049 (in her 60s), living a hermetic life in a small village. The black comedy series will follow the actress’ career after a mysterious scandal forces her into private life. The series begins at the end and rewinds Fanelli’s life to explore the events of her downfall and isolation.
Searchlight - 1 film
Wild Horse Nine by Martin McDonagh
Sony - 1 film
Bunker by Florian Zeller
A24 - 1 film
Primetime by Lance Oppenheim
Mubi - 1 film out of competition
My Undesirable Friends: Part II - Exile
Dir: Julia Loktev
This is the second part to Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I, which followed independent journalists in Moscow facing government crackdown as Russia invades Ukraine, capturing their fight for speech amid risks of being branded "foreign agents" and the country's drift towards authoritarianism.
GKIDS - 1 film
Look Back
Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters)
Synopsis:
Fujino, a gifted and determined teenager, is confident in her talent as an aspiring manga artist while the reclusive Kyomoto rarely leaves her room, devoting herself entirely to drawing. Brought together by their shared passion, the two small-town girls pursue their dream of becoming manga artists over the course of thirteen years.
Kore-eda’s cinema is flush with improvised families that make tiny, ruinous moral choices. Kore-eda is a prolific director. Not two months ago, he premiered another film at a major competition: Neon’s Sheep in a Box at Cannes.
VENICE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Kiefer Sutherland goes all killer preacher à la Machine Gun Preacher or The Boondock Saints in an out-of-competition film as the titular character in Father Joe. He plays a man of faith who wages a violent war against Manhattan's criminal underworld, putting him on a collision course with a powerful mob boss (Al Pacino) while guiding a young woman caught between danger and redemption.
We know Sutherland has been trending toward lighter, artier roles recently (Juror #2, They Cloned Tyrone, Melancholia), but sometimes we just want to see him go all Jack Bauer and kick ass.
Written by Luc Besson, so we know we’re in good violent hands.
Tidbits:
One of the most stacked casts is the Out of Competition film Place to Be starring Ellen Burstyn, Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson, and Murray Bartlett. The film follows an elderly woman and a middle-aged man who form an unexpected bond during a cross-country journey from Chicago to NY, accompanying a lost racing pigeon back to its home. It is directed by Kornél Mundruczó, who recently got crickets with his Berlin film At the Sea starring Amy Adams. But Mundruczó directed White God, one of the best films of the decade, so if the cast has chemistry, this could be quite profound. Burstyn is also in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s short film, Flesh Impact. First look.
Toni Servillo is the poetically self-indulgent yet eternally lost soul starring in The Great Beauty (2013). His masterwork can also be seen in director Paolo Sorrentino’s The Consequences of Love (2004) Il Divo (2008), and The Hand of God (2021). He will now play a celebrated illustrator, Daniele Mallarico, who lives in solitude until an unexpected clash with his grandson Mario in the out-of-competition film Scherzetto. First look.
Alba Rohrwacher (La Chimera) stars in the Competition film Un bon petit soldat. She plays a high-performing HR exec who comes across a dicey case with a toxic boss. The Industry’s Molly Wise has called Alba “a timeless beauty” and “her talent for playing commanding characters has been shown, especially as Spartaco in La Chimera.” Oh, and Vincent Lindon (Titane) likely plays the toxic boss. How perfect. First look.
Geoffrey Rush pops up in Venice Competition film Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? The film, which was based on a non-fiction account, follows Allen Nelson, an African American veteran of the Vietnam War, detailing his wartime experiences and the struggles he faced upon returning home. No word on his role, but it looks like he plays a psychologist, holding the weight of Mr. Nelson’s PTSD. First look at the pair.
Mélanie Laurent crops up in the out-of-competition film A Good Lawyer. I don’t think she plays the main character, but the synopsis is a perfect combination of spicy and dicey: Léonard Landry, a flamboyant criminal defense lawyer, overdoses in the middle of the courtroom. After undergoing rehab, he has one week to save his career and prepare for his own trial, reluctantly assisted by a tenacious intern, Noé.
VENICE DOC FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, the dynamic directing duo behind The Truffle Hunters and Gaucho Gaucho, have a doc out of competition in Venice, Burgundy.
Synopsis:
The story of Burgundy’s most extraordinary characters and a celebration of the pleasure that defines their lives.
These two have a way of finding salt-of-the-earth characters that connect us to our primordial roots as a species. This one sounds like it could be very beautiful as well.
One of the Venice docs, Be Brave, uses AI and, according to the synopsis:
Utilizes AI in a provocative and original way, placing the debate over the boundaries between human creativity and technology—and between the real and the artificial—at the heart of the film.
It’s apparently a remarkable journey into the world of a visionary in fashion and global communication. First look.
Mini Tidbits:
Groundbreaking doc filmmaker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, American Dream) is back with Out of Competition doc Union Town. Synopsis: Three separate but interconnected labor stories in and around New York City, focusing on delivery workers including those working for Amazon, UPS, and food-delivery apps, in their fight for higher wages and improved working conditions. First look.
Bleecker Street’s four-hour Alex Gibney Musk documentary plays out of competition. Described as an incisive BTS portrait of Elon Musk, this should give us a peek at the most notable/notorious public figure in recent times. After theaters, it’ll head to HBO.
Watermelon Pictures’ From Ground Zero doc director Ahmed Hassouna is back with Citizen Osama, a film about a former artistic photographer turned war documentarian who struggles to protect his wife and newborn while capturing devastation around him. First look.
Narrative director Sergei Loznitsa, who took his film Two Prosecutors to Cannes Competition last year, is directing the out-of-competition doc Imperium, which centers on the colonial dynamics of the USSR and the quiet resilience of its many peoples. First look.
There’s a 5.5hr bio doc about Jorge Luis Borges (Fictions, Labyrinths) from director Mariano Llinás.
Takashi Miike directs doc Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki. Enough said.
VENICE INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) is writing and directing a gothic mystery titled Company. Set on a cold winter night in 1975, the film follows a mysterious woman named Evelyn who arrived unexpectedly at a holiday gathering and tells an old tale of wary travelers and grisly murders across three timelines.
The cast is stacked: Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy star.
This will be Casey Affleck’s third feature film as director.
While Casey Affleck’s previous two films couldn’t be more different on paper, his ability for intimate atmospheric storytelling shines in both of them. Whether it’s following the unhinged career change of Joaquin Phoenix in I’m Still Here (2010) or painting an apocalyptic world where most of the female population has been wiped out by a deadly disease in Light of My Life (2019).
Affleck is also able to bring out naturalistic performances from his cast (that usually includes himself), often blurring the line between film and reality. I’m Still Here is a perfect example. With actors like Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn, Affleck’s gothic mystery film will surely be a compelling character study.
Acclaimed TV director May el-Toukhy, who crushed out 4 eps of Netflix’s The Crown, is the one woman with a film In Competition this year. It’s called Woman Unknown.
Synopsis:
Marie, a former housekeeper, plans an extravagant dinner party for her engagement to the household’s patriarch. As preparations unfold, hidden aspects of her past begin to surface, threatening to disrupt the celebration.
This has shades of The Reader, but to share any more could be a spoiler. First look.
Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, The Last Emperor) reaches Venice beyond the grave. He actually has two films at Venice, sort of.
First, he has a story credit on In Competition Film The Echo Chamber from director Andrea Pallaoro.
Synopsis:
A love story in which the boundaries between presence and absence, care and dependency, desire and control blur until they dissolve. Leo and Anne chase one another, brush against each other, lose one another, and seek each other out. They can neither let go nor break free. Ava’s voice echoes through the rooms, traversing time and bringing to the surface what endures—or what can no longer be held back.
Bertolucci wrote the original script, which was later adapted by filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro, who helped with the rewrite. It feels evocative of his work, especially Last Tango in Paris, which, while problematic, plays with relationships and time in a harsh way. Alicia Vikander is the physiotherapist, and she has a love affair with a music producer with a drug addiction. Susan Sarandon is a co-star. First look.
Second, Luca Guadagnino directs a 7.5-hour tribute doc on Bertolucci, Joie de Vivre. Synopsis: A tribute to legendary 20th-century filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, examining his cinema, art, and life. Features interviews with prominent film figures and directors he inspired across generations who share their perspectives.
Mini Tidbits:
Russell Crowe directs What Love Builds, a doc playing out of competition that is 45 years in the making. It’s about his band Indoor Garden Party. It traces their journey but is also very autobiographical. Turns out music has played a big part in Crowe’s life. Actually, the first film Crowe directed was another doc on a band he had called 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. That one came out in 2002 and was called Texas.
Wim Wenders is back with another 3D doc post Pina. It’s From Inside Out: The Architecture of Peter Zumthor. It explores the influential contemporary architect, Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor. The viewers experience the buildings as if they could walk around in them on their own. First look.
Don’t count Paul Schrader out. His film, The Basics of Philosophy, has a stacked cast with Jack Huston, Bill Pullman, and Karl Glusman. I think it’ll play like a more visceral After the Hunt, following Huston as a repressed philosophy professor who descends into guilt and spiritual reckoning. It’s something Schrader has excelled in, with his recent films The Card Counter and Oh, Canada.
Did you know there was an Odyssey film in 2024? That was Bleecker Street’s The Return starring an incredible Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. There’s a bat shit insane scene where he eats dirt. Okay, I digress. The producer of that film, Roberto Sessa, has a Venice Competition film called Il Fuoco Che ti Porti Dentro (The Fire You Carry Within You). First look.
Gael García Bernal directs Hombre al agua (Man Overboard). Synopsis: Camilo (García Bernal), a Cuban lifeguard, saves Mexican businessman Abel from drowning. Grateful, Abel brings Camilo to Mexico, where he marries Abel's daughter, Juana, and they have a child. But Camilo soon discovers his new life is part of Abel's Machiavellian plan of manipulation and control. There’s kind of a fun irony in this as García Bernal just played one master of the sea, as the titular Magellan. Seems like the sea is getting its revenge. First look.
Fresh off its selection for the Venice Film Festival, Daniel Zvereff’s animated sci-fi odyssey Moonfish has landed international sales with New Europe Film Sales. Led by Lucy Liu (Kill Bill) and Morgan Spector (The Gilded Age), it tells the story of an astronaut who’s lost his only companion on a deep-space mining mission, with his grief slowly beginning to loosen his grip on reality. Moonfish will screen in the Biennale College section.
Walter Fasano, the editor of Call Me By Your Name, has a feature doc, Nino. It centers on Italian composer Nino Rota (The Godfather, 8 1/2). First look.
Saoirse Ronan has a short film in the Orizzonti section called Paper Plane.
VENICE INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Neon’s next horror pickup? L'estranea (The Stranger) has a simple but powerful synopsis:
A mother arrives at her daughter's apartment during a storm to confess a lie that undermines their family's foundation, leading to an unraveling relationship between them.
First look photo.
The film, in competition, isn’t billed as a horror, but director Paolo Strippoli has directed a string of horrors, including Shudder’s recent The Holy Boy (2025), which also played in competition at Venice. He’s mastered the distortion of Gothic Italian interiors for maximum effect (trailer).
Two years in a row, director Ali Asgari has had a film in Venice’s competition. This year it’s Kami nour (A bit of light).
Synopsis:
After being arrested and having his medical practice shut down, an Iranian doctor loses faith in the future and resolves to end his life - but one final day among his family begins to unsettle his decision.
His films have a stark, ironic quality, almost like an Iranian Woody Allen. His previous film was Divine Comedy (2025), about a bumbling director (trailer).
Mini Tidbits:
RT Features (The Witch, Call Me By Your Name, Paper Tiger) produces Furies from Rami Kodeih. Synopsis: Amidst Lebanon’s real-life, corruption-induced bank crisis – when depositors were and today still are) denied access to their own savings – two women scheme a daring all-night heist to get their own money back and pay for a life-saving surgery. First look.
Best Synopsis of the festival for a sci-fi lover like me is in out-of-competition film No Pain (Nessun Dolore): A sleep phenomenon overtakes an entire town's population. Two boy scouts remain the only ones awake in a world that has fallen asleep.
Rebel of the Neon God director Tsai Ming-liang has an out-of-competition doc, Dust. Synopsis: A wanderer explores San Sebastián, encountering the Comb of the Wind sculpture where waves crash against rocks, an old Basque farmhouse, strangers drinking and smoking, punks in a bar, and the city at dusk—all reflecting Buddhist wisdom.
Another interesting horror that plays a bit like Antonio Campos’ Afterschool (2008) is Oasis, which is in the Orizzonti section. Synopsis: A viral video of a student's threats triggers school violence. Three outcasts flee to a forest where their games turn ritualistic and pain offers relief, until past traumas emerge and their relationships shift. First look.
See the full list of 2026 Venice films here.
Written and edited by Gabriel Miller.