Why are we talking about the 83rd Venice International Film Festival?
First held in 1932, the event evolved into, after Cannes, the second most significant film festival on the calendar. Previous winners of the Golden Lion, its top prize for a feature, include such classics as Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.
Movie stars, aware the atmosphere is less hectic than at the French bash, have always enjoyed arriving to the Lido in those lovely varnished speedboats while waving blithely at sea and sky.
Art-house fare dominated until the past decade or so, when Venice solidified its role as launching pad for the Oscars. Venice is now the first of an overlapping trifecta completed by Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado, and Toronto International Film Festival. But…
Are the Americans staying away this year?
We had the same conversation a few months ago about Cannes. It does seem as if there are fewer starry English-language productions than last year. Some have blamed the mixed reviews that, in 2025, went the way of Venice titles such as Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly.
But, looking at the calendar, not a huge number of potential glossy alternatives are premiering elsewhere. Maybe the Americans are taking a year off from the sort of titles that suit the Adriatic and Mediterranean bun fights.
At any rate, the jury, headed by the actor and film-maker Maggie Gyllenhaal, will get to consider entries by such auteurs as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Werner Herzog, Martin McDonagh, Danny Boyle and Nanni Moretti.
So which stars are attending?
We expect to see John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell for the world premiere of McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine. Guy Pearce and Claire Foy head up Boyle’s Ink. Robert Pattinson should be there to support Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime. Domhnall Gleeson told this writer he hoped to make it to the Lido to celebrate Werner Herzog’s cunningly titled Bucking Fastard. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz will be about for Florian Zeller’s Bunker.
There has been controversy about the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau, an epic following the career of a Soviet nuclear physicist over four decades, in the race for the Golden Lion
The festival lures two greats to pick up Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. Ellen Burstyn, now 93, will be recognised for legendary performances in such films as The Exorcist and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. George Clooney, whose film-star character in Jay Kelly was similarly honoured at an Italian event, will surely feel some deja vu as he picks up his Lion.
What’s in it for the Irish?
Plenty. Saoirse Ronan makes the plunge into directing with her first short. Titled Paper Plane, the film, receiving its world premiere, stars Martha Malone, Clare Dunne and Tim Creed in a Keeper Pictures and Una Pictures production.
Katie Holly, of Keeper, producer of two films from Sophie Fiennes on the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, returns with coproducer Evan Horan to that Slovenian eccentric for The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias. Fiennes’s latest has the great man again espousing his views on film, music and social media.
Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, filmed in Ireland, is stuffed with Irish actors. Martin McDonagh, of Sligo and Galway stock, will be flying the flag with Wild Horse Nine. So on those…
What the buck is Bucking Fastard and how did it get here?
There are interesting omens in Herzog’s progress to the Lido. Earlier this year, Variety reported that the characteristically off-centre film was offered an out-of-competition slot at Cannes – arguably a step down from the Palme d’Or race – and that this was turned down before Bucking Fastard was accepted for the main competition in Venice.
Twelve months ago, Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Briother, partly shot in Dublin, took exactly the same route to Venice and ended up winning the Palme d’Or.
Bucking Fastard: Rooney Mara and Kate Mara in Werner Herzog’s film. Photograph: Lena Herzog
Shot in Dublin and Co Kildare, Bucking Fastard stars the Mara sisters as eccentric twins who become obsessed with their neighbour. “I can’t wait to see it,” Gleeson told me. “I love the look of it.” Simon Delaney and Terry McMahon are also listed among the Irish cast.
What should we expect from Wild Horse Nine?
McDonagh has had a happy time at the Lido. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won best screenplay in 2017. Colin Farrell won best actor for The Banshees of Inisherin in 2022.
The new film stars Malkovich and Rockwell as CIA agents dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the Chilean coup that put Augusto Pinochet in power in 1973.
Wild Horse Nine: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in Martin McDonagh’s film. Photograph: Diego Araya Corvalán/Searchlight Pictures
The good people at Searchlight Pictures puffed: “It’s a privilege to work again with the incomparable Martin McDonagh who, with Wild Horse Nine, once again masterfully blends emotional nuance with razor-sharp dark comedy.”
The cast also features performances from such characterful actors as Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits.
Is there any scandal yet?
There has been some controversy about the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau, an epic following the career of a Soviet nuclear physicist over four decades, in the race for the Golden Lion.
Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as the world’s most powerful man, seems to be skipping all three big festivals
In mid-August the Ukrainian ministries of culture and foreign affairs issued a joint statement criticising the inclusion. “The project was financed by Sergei Adoniev, a Russian businessman sanctioned by both the United States and Ukraine and credibly linked to Putin’s regime,” the document noted.
Alberto Barbera, festival director, quickly issued a rebuttal. “Dau is not a Russian film,” he wrote. “It is not pro-Putin propaganda. It is a film that denounces totalitarian regimes.” The case continues.
What else is of note?
We should probably have included dear old Oasis in the Irish section. Liam and Noel Gallagher, proud sons of Peggy from Co Mayo, will be on the Lido for the premiere of Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger.
Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, the film follows the band as they reunite for that hugely successful tour in 2025. It features the first joint interview with the Gallagher brothers in 15 years.
Ink: Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch and Jack OConnell as Larry Lamb in Danny Boyle’s film. Photograph: Anthony Dickenson
Danny Boyle’s Ink, starring Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch, charts that tycoon’s efforts to take over the Sun newspaper in the late 1960s.
Pattinson stars as Chris Hanson, host of the controversial reality-TV show To Catch a Predator, in Primetime.
Bardem and Cruz are building a survivalist shelter in Bunker.
So what is Venice missing from the incoming awards season?
As we mentioned above, for all the gnashing of teeth, there were few obvious options that Barbera missed. Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as the world’s most powerful man, seems to be skipping all three big festivals.
The Venice programmer would, however, surely have wanted Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care and Simon Stone’s Elsinore, both of which look likely to premiere at Telluride.
Andrew Scott is already hotly tipped as an Oscar contender (indeed, winner) for the latter film, which deals with Ian Charleson playing Hamlet on the London stage in 1989 following his Aids diagnosis.
More omens? Twelve months ago, Jessie Buckley began her Oscar journey at Telluride. Both films centre on Shakespeare’s most celebrated play.
Who’s going to win the Golden Lion?
Once again, we call up the Oscar tipster Neil Young. The Vienna-based film programmer (whose odds are “for entertainment only”) installs the documentary Naza, a late entry from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, as a rare odds-on favourite, at 4/6.
The directors, who worked on the Oscar-winning No Other Land, from 2025, return to Gaza to detail the “systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians”.
Neil has Wild Horse Nine as second favourite, at 9/2. Then Primetime and Woman Unknown, from the Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, both at 12/1.
Venice International Film Festival begins on Wednesday, September 2nd, and runs until Saturday, September 12th