The 83rd Venice Film Festival has opened on the Lido, bringing Hollywood stars and leading filmmakers together for a programme dominated by war, political violence, grief, power and the pressures shaping the modern world.
Running from 2-12 September, the festival features 21 films competing for the prestigious Golden Lion, alongside documentaries, special screenings and a long list of international stars.
U.S. actor, director and producer George Clooney was honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the opening ceremony, while Danny Boyle's Ink, starring Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, opened proceedings.
First held in 1932, Venice remains one of Europe’s three major film festivals alongside Cannes and Berlin. This year, however, contemporary political and social issues have moved firmly to the centre of the cinematic conversation.
Festival director Alberto Barbera said many of the films considered during the selection process dealt directly with the problems facing the world today.
“We are in a space open to everybody for discussion, for confrontation,” Barbera said, adding that such films could help audiences better understand “what is going on in our contemporary, difficult world”.
One of the clearest examples is Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto’s Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, which premiered in competition on Friday, 4 September.
The film follows Allen Nelson, an African American Vietnam War veteran, whose experiences left him grapplingwith guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tsukamoto said he began working on the project seven years ago, amid growing concern that Japan was moving away from the pacifist stance it had maintained since the Second World War.
War and political violence also feature prominently in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as ageing CIA operatives against the backdrop of Chile’s 1973 coup.
Set largely on Easter Island, the film follows the two men as they take a break while preparing for the U.S.-backed effort to overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende.
McDonagh said he had not written the film with today’s events in mind, but now sees striking parallels with the present.
“It's almost the perfect time for a film like this to come out,” he said, arguing that covert U.S. intervention in other countries has a long history.
At its heart, the film examines guilt and regret through two men whose careers have been shaped by covert operations and political violence.
It is among the 21 films competing for the Golden Lion.
Outside the main competition, Everest: The Other Side transforms a tale of extraordinary mountaineering ambition into an exploration of grief, loss and resilience.
Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Oscar-winning climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin, the National Geographic documentary originally followed ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson as they attempted to climb and ski down Mount Everest’s Direct North Face.
Few climbers have completed the route, and no one had previously skied it.
The project took a devastating turn when Nelson died in 2022 while skiing down Nepal’s Mount Manaslu. Her death was captured on film.
The documentary follows Morrison as he confronts the loss of his partner and wrestles with whether to pursue the ambition they once shared.
Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard offers a radically different cinematic challenge.
Rooney and Kate Mara play Jean and Joan Holbrooke, fictionalised versions of real-life British twins whose extraordinary closeness sees them speak in perfect synchrony, share dreams and fall in love with the same man.
The film marks the first time the sisters have acted together on screen.
Their unusual performances required them to master dialogue and movements with such precision that their speech would sound as though it came from a single person.
The sisters initially had two weeks of rehearsals planned, but Herzog was so impressed that he cut the preparation period to just five days.
Herzog described the Maras’ performances as unprecedented in film history.
The veteran director, whose films include Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, is a familiar presence at Venice, having returned repeatedly over the decades.
The festival opened with Ink, Danny Boyle's adaptation of James Graham's play about the British newspaper industry.
Set in 1969, the film follows Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of The Sun and his transformation of the newspaper into a mass-circulation tabloid.
Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, while Jack O'Connell portrays editor Larry Lamb.
Boyle has compared making Ink with his work on Trainspotting, saying both projects relied on committed ensembles and a central performer capable of driving the production.
He said O’Connell became the centre around which the film’s ensemble was built.
“I haven't learned a great deal in 30 years and that's probably a good thing,” Boyle said.
The Golden Lion competition brings together established auteurs and emerging filmmakers from around the world.
Among the films competing are Nanni Moretti’s Succederà questa notte, Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back, Paolo Strippoli’s L’estranea, Florian Zeller’s Bunker, Casey Affleck’s Company, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau, Stéphane Brizé’s Un bon petit soldat, Edoardo De Angelis’ Il fuoco che ti porti dentro, Nicolas Pariser’s Un peu avant minuit, NAZA by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light and Marco Bechis’ Ritorno a Buenos Aires.
Among the most anticipated titles is Possible Love, the first feature from Lee Chang-dong since Burning in 2018. The South Korean filmmaker explores the intertwined lives of two couples.
Woman Unknown by Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy offers a suspenseful story set in post-war Denmark, where a wealthy widower's decision to marry his child's nanny exposes secrets connected to his late wife.
Florian Zeller's Bunker, meanwhile, stars Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in a drama about a fashionable architect who accepts a commission to design a survivalist bunker for an oligarch.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau continues one of cinema’s most controversial and unconventional projects of recent years.
The film draws from hundreds of hours of experimental footage shot in Ukraine around 15 years ago as part of Khrzhanovsky's vast multimedia project about Soviet physicist Lev Landau.
The story explores sexuality, psychology and the possibility of love inside a totalitarian society.
Its unusual immersive production methods have long attracted attention, making Dau one of the more unconventional entries in this year’s competition.
Documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim makes his feature directing debut with Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as real-life television presenter Chris Hansen.
Hansen became known for To Catch a Predator, the 2000s reality television programme in which suspected child sexual abusers were lured to a house and confronted on camera.
The film examines the complicated relationship between television spectacle, morality and the people who construct such confrontations for an audience.
Music fans, meanwhile, will have their own major Venice attraction in Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger.
The documentary follows the hugely successful reunion of Liam and Noel Gallagher's Oasis, using backstage, rehearsal and concert footage alongside interviews with the famously fractious brothers.
The film examines the uneasy relationship between television spectacle and morality, as well as the people who construct such confrontations for an audience.
The festival's programme extends well beyond the main competition.
Luca Guadagnino presents Joie de Vivre, a seven-hour documentary portrait of legendary Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci.
The film examines Bertolucci's career through conversations with collaborators, admirers and critics, while also confronting controversies surrounding his treatment of actress Maria Schneider during the making of Last Tango in Paris.
Father Joe, starring Al Pacino and Kiefer Sutherland, brings a Manhattan mob drama to the festival, with Sutherland playing a fiery New York priest confronting organised crime.
Toni Servillo appears in Scherzetto, playing a retired illustrator forced to care for his four-year-old grandson for 72 hours.
Another major attraction is Maggie Gyllenhaal's short film Flesh Impact, dedicated to Marilyn Monroe on the centenary of her birth. Dakota Johnson plays Monroe at the height of her fame, while Ellen Burstyn portrays an older version of the actress.
The festival will also feature major stars including Russell Crowe, Gael García Bernal, Mia Wasikowska, Saoirse Ronan and Taika Waititi.
Despite the breadth of the programme, the festival has faced criticism over the representation of women directors in the main competition.
Only one of the 21 films competing for the Golden Lion is directed by a woman.
Barbera acknowledged the imbalance, calling it “a big problem”.
He said the festival had programmed many films by women in its side sections but had not found enough films it considered strong enough to include in the main competition.
“I’m completely aware of the fact that there is a lot to do to give women the place that they deserve in cinema,” he said.
The international jury that will decide the winner of the Golden Lion is chaired by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
She is joined by Tunisian director and screenwriter Kaouther Ben Hania, British composer and artist Daniel Blumberg, film professor and theorist Francesco Casetti, French director Xavier Giannoli, Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat and Hong Kong director and producer Johnnie To.
Other juries will oversee the Orizzonti section and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film.
Clooney took centre stage on the festival’s opening day as he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
The award recognises a career spanning acting, directing and producing, including films such as Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Clooney has maintained a long relationship with Venice and has described it as his favourite festival.
Festival director Barbera said the award was partly intended to highlight an aspect of Clooney's career that can be overshadowed by his public image.
He described Clooney as “one of the greatest actors at the moment” as well as a major filmmaker and director.
Ellen Burstyn, 93, will also receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
From Vietnam to Chile, from the mountains of Nepal to the political anxieties of contemporary society, this year's Venice programme repeatedly returns to questions of violence, mortality, memory and power.
Even films without an overtly political message are often concerned with grief, personal responsibility, survival or the consequences of decisions made under extreme circumstances.
That may be why the festival feels particularly connected to the moment in which it is taking place.
As Barbera observed, contemporary problems have inevitably found their way into the films arriving on the Lido.
With the Golden Lion to be awarded on 12 September, Venice now has 11 days to determine which of these stories will leave the festival with its highest honour.
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