The 11 Most Anticipated Films at Venice 2026

While last year’s Venice International Film Festival was a starry affair, the 83rd edition is lighter on blockbusters and studio tentpoles. Bigger names like Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and the Mara sisters (on-screen together for the first time) do make an appearance, but this year’s fare leans into a lineup of respected auteurs. Werner Herzog, Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller, Paul Schrader, and Lee Chang-dong all have new work on the Lido, and the festival is stacked with offbeat dramas that examine the pressing issues of our era. Maggie Gyllenhaal will preside over the jury, with Ellen Burstyn and George Clooney receiving lifetime-achievement Golden Lions and Luca Guadagnino picking up the festival’s Glory to the Filmmaker award before screening a seven-hour documentary. The selection has already drawn criticism for its gender imbalance, with May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown the lone competition title directed by a woman. Below, the films we're most eager to see:

Primetime (Lance Oppenheim)

No modern movie star is better at picking interesting roles than Robert Pattinson, and his latest is a true swerve: the actor will portray Chris Hansen in 2006, the year To Catch a Predator graduated from a niche Dateline NBC segment into a pop-culture phenomenon and national sensation. Oppenheim, the documentarian behind Some Kind of Heaven and HBO’s Ren Faire, makes his narrative debut with the A24 film, which will be released in theaters on September 25 and whose cast includes Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, and Bokeem Woodbine (former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker makes an appearance as himself). Hansen has weighed in on the film, calling Pattinson’s (already viral) performance “overly dramatic” but admitting his wife and kids think he does a “pretty good imitation.” The host has also purchased preshow advertising on every screen showing the film, directing audiences to his new streaming network dedicated to To Catch a Predator-style investigations.

Musk (Alex Gibney)

Director Alex Gibney, who won an Oscar for best documentary in 2008 for Taxi to the Dark Side, will premiere his controversial and buzzy film Musk at Venice this year. For four years, Gibney has been working on the documentary, which runs nearly four hours and follows the tech oligarch from his upbringing in South Africa to becoming the world’s first trillionaire. The film includes Musk’s work with era-defining companies including PayPal, Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla, as well as his involvement with Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the federal government with DOGE. Musk has already criticized the film, which arrives in theaters this October, writing on X, “It’s a hit piece.” Musk isn’t Gibney’s first foray into chronicling the lives of the rich and infamous: he’s also chronicled figures like the main players of the Enron scandal, Julian Assange, and Elizabeth Holmes in past documentaries.

Ink (Danny Boyle)

Last year, everyone was talking about Danny Boyle thanks to 28 Years Later, his two-decades-in-the-making follow-up to his cult classic horror film 28 Days Later. This year, it’ll be due to Ink, the British director’s adaptation of James Graham’s Tony-nominated play about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 purchase of The Sun. The film, which opens Venice and will be distributed by Netflix, stars Guy Pearce as Murdoch and Jack O’Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor Murdoch hired to turn the then-failing Sun into Britain’s best-selling tabloid (Claire Foy rounds out the cast). Although journalism has served as a fruitful topic throughout cinematic history, Boyle’s vision for Ink had its doubters. “People couldn’t understand why I wanted to do it,” he recently told Vanity Fair. But, he says, Murdoch and Lamb’s transformation of The Sun “had more of an impact on our world than the men landing on the moon.”

Bucking Fastard (Werner Herzog)

Iconic documentarian Werner Herzog returns to Venice following last year’s Ghost Elephants with his first narrative feature in seven years. Bucking Fastard casts real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara, on-screen together for the first time, as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, twins so inseparable that they speak in unison and love the same man. The film is loosely based on real-life identical twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, who became infamous in 1980s Britain after a man they were both involved with (played in the film by Orlando Bloom) had a restraining order put against them. Herzog has said the film completes an operatic triptych with Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Grizzly Man (2005).

Bunker (Florian Zeller)

French director Florian Zeller, who won an Academy Award for his 2020 film adaptation of his critically acclaimed play The Father, wrote his third feature specifically for Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Bunker tells the story of a couple whose 17-year marriage begins to unravel when the architect husband (Bardem) accepts a morally ambiguous project to design a bunker for a billionaire. Per Deadline, Zeller said of the film: “I wanted to tell the story of a marriage and was deeply compelled to work with a real-life couple. This film will push the boundaries of narrative and emotional truth, blurring the lines between reality and fiction in a way that feels thrilling and deeply human.” Cruz and Bardem, who have themselves been married for 16 years, have worked together on-screen many times over the past few decades, including in films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Everybody Knows.

Ga-neung-han sa-rang (Possible Love) (Lee Chang-dong)

Eight years after wooing audiences and critics alike with 2018’s Burning (and winning the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice for 2002’s Oasis), Lee Chang-dong returns with a relationship drama starring four of South Korea’s biggest names: Jeon Do-yeon, who won Best Actress at Cannes for Lee’s Secret Sunshine, Sul Kyung-gu, the star of his Peppermint Candy and Oasis, Zo In-sung, and Parasite’s Cho Yeo-jeong. Lee spent more than a decade developing Possible Love, which tells the story of two couples becoming increasingly intertwined as one makes a documentary about the other. Loosely inspired by Kieślowski's Dekalog, the film is already Korea's Oscar submission, with Netflix reportedly eyeing a Best Picture campaign alongside the international feature race.

Wild Horse Nine (Martin McDonagh)

Martin McDonagh has spun Venice premieres into awards gold twice in the last decade, with 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin and 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That makes his newest black comedy, Wild Horse Nine, one of the buzzier entries into competition this year. The film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents Chris and Lee, dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island by their bureau chief (Steve Buscemi) in the weeks before the 1973 Chilean coup. Tom Waits and Parker Posey round out the starry cast.

The Basics of Philosophy (Paul Schrader)

Paul Schrader’s latest addition to his “man in a room” lineage makes its solitary figure a repressed philosophy professor. In The Basics of Philosophy, Jack Huston plays John Jorissen, who is teaching at a small Midwestern liberal arts college and writing a book on Spinoza when his estranged father dies. A mysterious young man appears at the funeral and forces the professor to contemplate a past regret. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer on the project, continuing a legendary partnership that dates back to Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and earning The Basics of Philosophy high expectations at Venice.

Union Town (Barbara Kopple)

Iconic documentarian Barbara Kopple calls Union Town the third film in a triptych that began with 1976’s Harlan County, USA and 1990’s American Dream, both of which won her Oscars and were recently restored and rereleased by Janus. Filmed over three years, Union Town follows workers of New York’s delivery gig economy, weaving together organizing fights at UPS and Amazon with the largely immigrant-based workforce of bike couriers whose working hours are controlled by apps.

Joie de Vivre (Luca Guadagnino)

Luca Guadagnino is a friend of Venice, premiering films like Suspiria, Bones and All, Queer, and last year’s Julia Roberts-starring After the Hunt at the festival. This year, he’s showing a seven-hour documentary about Bernardo Bertolucci the same evening he’ll receive the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker award. Joie de Vivre is actually Guadagnino’s second work about the Italian director, after his 2013 essay film which brought together Bertolucci’s own interviews. This time, the Challengers director draws together Bertolucci’s films with interviewers from fellow directors, critics, and friends.

Flesh Impact (Maggie Gyllenhaal)

The festival’s jury president also brings a 17-minute short, Flesh Impact, timed to the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth and made with her estate’s blessing (and presented by Genesis). Ellen Burstyn—who will receive the Golden Lion lifetime-achievement award and traveled in similar circles as Monroe before her death—plays a mysterious older woman auditioning for a play at a New York theater. As she describes her career, it becomes clear who she is, and who she might have become had she lived. Dakota Johnson, whom Gyllenhaal directed in The Lost Daughter, plays Monroe at the height of her fame.