Venice International Film Festival 2026

Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the host of To Catch a Predator, was not on our 2026 bingo card, yet here we are. Primetime follows Hansen in 2006 as he attempts to make television history with the hugely controversial programme, which turned sting operations into compulsive viewing. It’s the narrative-feature debut of Lance Oppenheim, the documentarian behind Some Kind of Heaven, Spermworld and HBO’s Ren Faire. With Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers joining Pattinson, the film has a cast as curious as its premise. Expect a study of television, spectacle and the uncomfortable line between public service and entertainment.

Hirokazu Kore-eda has a rare ability to make the smallest emotional shifts feel seismic. In Look Back, he follows Fujino, an ambitious young manga artist, and Kyomoto, a talented but reclusive girl who barely leaves her room. Their shared devotion to drawing brings them together, and the film traces their friendship and artistic ambitions across thirteen years. The Japanese director, whose Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or in 2018, is a master of family and chosen-family stories, always attentive to what goes unsaid. This one is likely to be gentler than the festival’s bunker thrillers and political conspiracies — but don’t mistake gentle for slight.

Liam and Noel Gallagher’s reunion was always going to need a film, preferably one with plenty of backstage footage and a working fire extinguisher. Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, who previously made the LCD Soundsystem documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, follow Oasis’s Live ’25 reunion tour. The documentary includes the brothers’ first joint interviews in more than twenty-five years, as well as never-before-filmed rehearsals and the fervour surrounding a band whose songs have travelled across generations. Whether you queued for tickets, watched it unfold online or still think Definitely Maybe is sacred text, this should be one of Venice’s most crowd-pleasing events.

Martin McDonagh is taking his caustic humour to Easter Island in Wild Horse Nine, a political thriller set shortly before Chile’s 1973 coup. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play CIA agents sent from Santiago to the remote island by their superior, played by Steve Buscemi. There, old conspiracies, a troublesome past and a connection with two rebellious students threaten to derail the mission. Add Tom Waits and Parker Posey to the cast and the result already sounds gloriously unpredictable. After The Banshees of Inisherin, the writer-director returns to a setting where isolation does not necessarily mean peace, and where paradise may be just another word for trouble.

At fifteen, a single day can contain the emotional range of an entire lifetime. Jacqueline Lentzou’s _A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra_ follows Jo, a melancholic and unruly teenager whose feelings begin to shift after she hears Phaedra’s ethereal song. Between writing a poem, cutting an apology rose for her moody mother and trying to make sense of a disappearing dream, Jo experiences a day of quietly significant changes. The Greek filmmaker, acclaimed for her intimate and playful short films, brings her distinctive sensitivity to Orizzonti. Small gestures, huge feelings — the teenage condition in a nutshell.

New Year’s Eve is already a dangerous time for family tensions, expectations and questions about whether one should have another glass of wine. In Michelle Zhou’s Big Little Things, a seemingly perfect middle-class Chinese family faces a particularly complicated celebration when their daughter Lei brings a man home to pretend to be her boyfriend. Then her actual girlfriend arrives, turning the performance into a very real intimacy crisis. Presented in the Orizzonti section, the film stars Cuishan Liang, Jialing Sun, Bin Yu, Ling Hu and Hai Yu. A sharp premise with enough room for tenderness, awkwardness and social observation? We’re listening.

Eight years after Burning left audiences arguing about cats, greenhouses and what exactly had happened, Lee Chang-dong is back with Possible Love. The South Korean director brings together Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung and Cho Yeo-jeong for the story of two married couples: one formed by a recently laid-off worker and his wife, the other by a documentary filmmaker and her spouse. When their lives intersect during the making of a documentary, hidden desires begin to surface. At 164 minutes, this is not necessarily a quick lunchtime watch, but Lee has never been interested in easy answers — and we would not have it any other way.

May el-Toukhy, the Danish director behind the unsettling Queen of Hearts, returns to Venice with another story where desire, power and social expectation are not remotely tidy. Woman Unknown follows Marie, a young nanny and housemaid who is about to marry Christian, the wealthy older widower for whom she works. However, a secret from the Second World War — an intimate relationship with a German soldier — threatens her new position in post-war society. Starring Mathilde Arcel, Carsten Bjørnlund and Thorbjørn Hedegaard, this period drama sounds primed to examine status and shame with the director’s usual psychological precision.

Werner Herzog directing Kate and Rooney Mara as sisters who speak in unison, dream the same dreams and fall for the same man? Say no more. In Bucking Fastard, the two play Jean and Joan Holbrooke, whose unusual intimacy attracts the attention of courts, the press, supposed helpers and, intriguingly, animals. It sounds strange even by Herzog standards, which is saying something. The German filmmaker received Venice’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement only last year, but retirement has clearly not entered the chat. With Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson also involved, this one promises an off-kilter world where reality, myth and human behaviour are unlikely to remain in separate rooms for long.

We may have saved this for last, but not the team behind the festival, who chose it as the opening film. Danny Boyle’s new movie, written by James Graham from his own play, revisits the 1969 launch of The Sun under Rupert Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb. Jack O’Connell plays Lamb, with Guy Pearce as Murdoch and Claire Foy as journalist Jules Davies. Boyle, whose filmography stretches from Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Years Later, makes his Venice competition debut with a story about the tabloid’s cheeky, disruptive rise. Newspapers may be having a complicated moment, but this sounds like precisely the loud, fast and morally messy origin story he does best.