Alberto Barbera presided over a lengthy press conference Thursday morning, during which he unveiled the stacked lineup for this year’s Venice Film Festival, which runs from 2-12 September. Scroll down for the full list of titles. The lineup is expansive, with several major names returning to the festival across its many strands.
However, studio titles are notably absent, continuing the trend from Cannes, which studios also largely skipped. In competition, Casey Affleck will debut Company, his latest film as a director. The film has previously been described as a“Gothic horror”.
South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong returns to feature filmmaking with Possible Love, his first film since Burning (2018). Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda lands at Venice with Look Back, his second festival title of 2026. The filmmaker was also at Cannes in May with Sheep in the Box.
Martin McDonagh returns to Venice with Wild Horse Nine, his first feature since The Banshees of Inisherin, which clinched Best Screenplay and Actor at Venice in 2022 before landing 9 Oscar noms. Veteran Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti returns to Venice with a film in a first since 1989. The feature is Succederà Questa Notte and stars Louis Garrel.
Out of Competition, Paul Schrader will screen a new project titled The Basics of Philosophy starring Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella. The film is stated to follow a repressed philosophy professor who has been grappling with lingering guilt over a decision from his past when the victim suddenly returns to his life. Venice regular Luca Guadagnino will be on the Lido this year but not with his OpenAI feature Artificial.
The Italian filmmaker will instead screen his long-gestating Bernardo Bertolucci documentary Joie De Vivre. The film runs seven hours long. Wim Wenders is also out of competition with a doc on the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.
Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s doc on the comeback of rock band Oasis, titled Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger, will also debut on the Lido. Elsewhere, Laura Poitras will debut a short she shot with Rachel Mueller titled They’re Here. The film features never-before-seen footage of the protests in Minnesota against Trump’s controversial ICE raids.
As previously unveiled, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is heading this year’s Competition jury, will screen Flesh Impact, a tribute to Marilyn Monroe on her centenary. The film stars Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn. Italian filmmaker Alina Marazzi will debut her first feature in a decade.
The project is titled La Ragazza Con La Leica; Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili returns with Guria, a black-and-white feature set in western Georgia. Former Red Sea Film Festival head Kaleem Aftab is among the film’s producers. The festival has already unveiled that this year’s opening title will be Danny Boyle’s Ink.
The film, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, will screen on September 2 in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido. Boyle directs the feature from a screenplay written by James Graham (Dear England), based on his Tony-nominated play Ink. O’Connell stars as The Sun newspaper editor Larry Lamb with Pearce as Rupert Murdoch.
Claire Foy is Jules Davies. Unveiling the title earlier this summer, Barbera described the title as an“Account of publisher Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the daily newspaper The Sun, which he entrusted to the unscrupulous Larry Lamb, turning it into Britain’s best-selling tabloid at the expense of its rival, The Mirror.” The festival’s closing title will be Dio ride, written and directed by Giovanni Veronesi (The King’s Musketeers).
The film will screen out of competition. Pierfrancesco Favino, Silvio Orlando, Alma Noce, Francesco Gheghi, Maurizio Lombardi, Paolo Rossi and Carlo Cecchi star in the film. George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will be the recipients of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement this year.