A major industry crisis has led Hollywood to step back from this year’s Venice Film Festival, making way for a schedule focused on global politics and social upheaval, the event’s director said Tuesday.
Festival director Alberto Barbera noted that the gritty line-up reflects growing filmmaker engagement with current events, spanning the Gaza conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to billionaire influence and U.S. immigration enforcement.
The world’s oldest film festival, running Wednesday through September 12, traditionally opens awards season. However, many major studio-backed Oscar contenders are missing, just as they were at Cannes in May.
“The problem is Hollywood. They face a huge crisis,” Barbera told Reuters. “They’re producing fewer films, more costly. Some of them work very well and some of them are, on the contrary, a commercial disaster. So they don’t know what to do.”
open image in galleryIndustry insiders say tighter budgets have reduced studio appetite for expensive Venice debuts. They also fear savage reviews like those that hit the “Joker” sequel at Venice in 2024 before its theatrical release.
Venice will still feature plenty of star power.
George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will receive lifetime achievement awards, while Robert Pattinson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, John Malkovich, and Rooney Mara are expected to attend.
British rock stars Liam and Noel Gallagher will also attend the premiere of “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” a documentary about the Oasis reunion.
The 2026 program includes new films from high-profile directors Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller, Danny Boyle, and Werner Herzog, vying for the Golden Lion Award.
Opening the festival is Boyle’s “Ink,” a drama about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 takeover of The Sun tabloid, which launched his global media empire.
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open image in galleryBarbera named the film as an Oscar hopeful, alongside works by South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Shinya Tsukamoto, presenting the English-language Vietnam War story “Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?”
As Barbera and his team sifted through a record 4,500 entries for the festival, organizers found filmmakers turning increasingly toward global issues like war, migration, climate change, and democratic strain.
“Documentaries are so strong in dealing with great issues of the contemporary world,” he said. “I couldn’t avoid inviting them to the festival.”
Among the most eagerly anticipated is Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour portrait of Elon Musk, and Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller’s “They’re Here”, about ICE raids on immigrants in Minnesota.
The Gaza conflict features prominently, including the documentary “NAZA” by Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, which examines Palestinian civilian deaths.
“We selected four works about the situation in Israel and Gaza and the problem of Palestine,” he said. “Our position is quite clear.”