The world’s oldest film festival will lean heavily into global politics and social upheaval this year, as Hollywood heavyweights stay away amid what organisers have called an existential reckoning for the American studio system.
The 83rd Venice Film Festival, running from Wednesday through 12 September, traditionally heralds the start of awards season. But this year’s line-up reads more like a documentary dispatch from the front lines of the 21st century, with the Gaza conflict, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, climate breakdown, immigration enforcement and the influence of billionaire tech titans all jostling for attention.
“It’s Hollywood that has the problem,” festival director Alberto Barbera told Reuters. “They face a huge crisis. They’re producing fewer films, more costly. Some of them work very well and some of them are, on the contrary, a commercial disaster. So they don’t know what to do.”
The studio retreat
The absence of major studio-backed Oscar contenders is not a Venice quirk. It echoes Cannes in May, where the red carpet felt thinner than usual. Industry insiders point to tightening budgets, a bruised appetite for splashy European premieres, and the lingering trauma of savage reviews. The 2024 Venice debut of the Joker sequel, panned by critics before its theatrical release, still haunts marketing executives.
Without the usual big-studio blockbusters competing for column inches, Venice has pivoted, deliberately and unapologetically, toward the world outside Hollywood’s bubble.
A record haul and a political pulse
Barbera and his programmers sifted through a staggering 4,500 submissions, a festival record. What emerged was a programme unmistakably shaped by the crises of the moment.
“Documentaries are so strong in dealing with great issues of the contemporary world,” Barbera said. “I couldn’t avoid inviting them to the festival.”
Among the most anticipated is Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour portrait of Elon Musk, and Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller’s They’re Here, which documents ICE raids on immigrants in Minnesota. The Gaza conflict features prominently, including the documentary NAZA by Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, which examines Palestinian civilian deaths.
Barbera named four works tackling the situation in Israel, Gaza and Palestine. “Our position is quite clear,” he said.
Star power still sparkles, just differently
Venice would not be Venice without a few household names on the gondolas. George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will receive lifetime achievement honours. Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, John Malkovich and Rooney Mara are expected along the Lido. And in a curveball few saw coming, Liam and Noel Gallagher will hit town for the premiere of Don’t Look Back in Anger, a documentary chronicling the Oasis reunion.
The competition for the Golden Lion brings new films from Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller, Werner Herzog, South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Shinya Tsukamoto, whose English-language Vietnam War story, Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People?, will compete for top honours.
Opening night belongs to Danny Boyle’s Ink, a drama about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 takeover of The Sun tabloid, the move that launched his global media empire. Barbera has flagged it as an early Oscar hopeful, though given Hollywood’s current identity crisis, predicting what voters will warm to is anyone’s guess.
Why it matters
Venice has long positioned itself as cinema’s crystal ball, the place where Oscar contenders are minted. This year’s programme suggests the industry’s gaze has drifted decisively away from superhero spectacle and toward the fault lines of geopolitics, climate and corporate power. Whether that reflects a temporary pivot or a deeper, permanent recalibration of what cinema should be about, Venice 2026 has made one thing clear: the storytellers showing up are no longer interested in looking away.
