The Venice Film Festival is dedicated to political cinema

The Venice Film Festival aims to be a reflection of the major issues of contemporary times, whether war, censorship, or democratic crises. Under this premise, the festival selects those films that, as its artistic director Alberto Barbera points out, do not merely serve as simple chronicles but seek to challenge a world marked by conflicts, migrations, social tensions, or the consequences of climate change. 

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Perhaps the 83rd edition starting tomorrow and running until September 12 will bring the festival closer to that goal: more than 150 films in 11 days, with a strong presence of politics in the scripts and fewer Hollywood stars willing to show off, paint a festival more attentive to what happens off-screen than what takes place on its red carpet.

It is no coincidence that the festival guarantees a pretty face right from the start. Starting with style allows it to then dive into more significant and perhaps less glamorous issues for the tabloids. But in this case, actor George Clooney, who will receive the Honorary Golden Lion at the opening day, is not lacking in political commitment, especially since he became a French citizen earlier this year and had to respond to the disparaging remarks made by Donald Trump. In the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, the Venetian island where the festival takes place, Laura Dern will deliver the tribute speech. 

Why Dern? Perhaps because the Californian actress (who will now play the journalist who uncovered the Epstein case) was at the festival last year presenting Jay Kelly with Clooney. But the leading man with a house on Lake Como will not be the only one to receive such an honor. Also, the mother of The Exorcist, Ellen Burstyn, will deserve the award, although she had to wait until she turned 93. The festival also commemorates the centenary of Marilyn Monroe and Bernardo Bertolucci, whose last script written before his death in 2018 arrives at the festival with The Echo Chamber, a film by Italian Andrea Pallaoro competing officially.

Hollywood is present in Venice with figures like John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and Parker Posey, who star in a dark comedy by Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine, about two CIA agents sent to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Casey Affleck and Nick Nolte, director and star of Company, will also arrive by water taxi at the Lido. And Werner Herzog offers the first opportunity for sisters Kate and Rooney Mara to work together – as twins – in Bucking Fastard. Orlando Bloom, another actor in this film, will walk the red carpet, as will Robert Pattinson, who will attend with Lance Oppenheim with Primetime.

Meanwhile, Susan Sarandon and Alicia Vikander represent the aforementioned The Echo Chamber. And out of competition, Dakota Johnson – playing Marilyn Monroe in the short Flesh Impact by Maggie Gyllenhaal – Russell Crowe, who directs a film about his creative process as an actor and musician in What Love Builds, and Pamela Anderson, who plays Ellen Burstyn’s daughter, an elderly woman who forms an unexpected friendship with a middle-aged man (Taika Waititi) in the road movie Place to Be, will be seen.

They not only represent Spain at the festival but European cinema in general. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz will make their star appearance at the Lido as protagonists of Bunker, the thriller by French director Florian Zeller – with Spanish co-production – also starring Paul Dano, Stephen Graham, and Patrick Schwarzenegger. Bardem plays an architect with moral doubts about building a secret luxury bunker for a tech magnate… and Penélope is the wife. 

But there are more European icons at the festival: Vincent Lindon, with Un bon petit soldat; Chiara Mastroianni, for Un peu avant minuit; Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in L’Estranea – one of the most important Italian films of the year – and Louis Garrel, with Succederà questa notte, another French-Spanish production marking Nanni Moretti’s return to the festival after 37 years! The sensitive Italian filmmaker considered it a snub that his Palombella Rossa was not included in competition in 1989.

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This edition of the festival is one of the most committed to human rights, with titles addressing contemporary conflicts of high political impact. Naza, for example, added to the official competition at the last minute due to security concerns, is filmed over the rooftops of Tel Aviv by Jewish filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (No Other Land), revealing the systems behind massive attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Also, The Road to Jericho focuses on the consequences of the war in Gaza, with Amos Gitai weaving in the voices of Samuel Fuller, Jeanne Moreau, and Arthur Miller in a documentary-fiction hybrid that will spark discussion. 

Looking to other regions, Russia and Ukraine have their film share at the festival. There is DAU, a radical project that began as the biography of a Soviet scientist and ended up recreating a totalitarian dictatorship, competing despite Ukrainian protests, which see Kremlin involvement in its funding. Out of competition, three other films are presented: the second part of My Undesirable Friends, a six-hour documentary focused on exiled Russian dissident journalists; Imperium, about the Italian Communist Party under Soviet propaganda and political control; and Letters from the Silenced Country, addressing repression of the opposition in Belarus. 

At the same time, the drama in competition A Bit of Light deals with social repression, exploring the suffocation of the contemporary Iranian regime through the disillusionment of a doctor whose license is revoked by the authorities. Finally, Marco Bechis, who personally experienced the kidnapping by the Videla dictatorship, tells the story in Ritorno a Buenos Aires. The film follows the victim in 2008 during his return to Argentina to testify.

The opening film in the official section will be Ink, a biographical drama directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) centered on media magnate Rupert Murdoch at the time of buying the newspaper The Sun. The film, starring Guy Pearce, Claire Foy, and Jack O’Connell, analyzes the enormous political, social, and ideological influence his media empire has exerted globally. Then, out of competition, a four-hour documentary dissecting Elon Musk’s figure, his control of digital platforms, and the political impact of current tech corporations will be shown.

The Gallagher brothers star out of competition in the documentary Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, the story of their return to the stage after the well-known and chronic feud that kept them apart. It cannot be ruled out that they might not show up at the last minute, but the festival director, Alberto Barbera, said when announcing the film that they have promised to attend. Another musical idol appearing on screen is Puerto Rican Ricky Martin, who participates in Hombre al Agua, Gael García Bernal’s third feature as a director. And watch out, Tom Waits makes a brief appearance in Wild Horse Nine and indie singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers appears in Primetime.

In the out-of-competition category, Argentine Mariano Llinás will premiere a five-hour documentary about Jorge Luis Borges. A biography that simultaneously narrates an entire century of literature and history. This will be in the out-of-competition category, where two films with Spanish production will also be screened: Holy Wood Dust, by Russian Víktor Kossakovsky, an ode to plant intelligence, and Dust, another installment of the series about the Buddhist monk that Malaysian Tsai Ming-liang is now taking to San Sebastián.

An innovative out-of-competition documentary filmed with AI tools portrays Diesel brand founder Renzo Rosso. It is Be Brave, by Francesco Carrozzini, featuring testimony from designer John Galliano and Anna Wintour, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue USA.

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