The 2026 Venice Film Festival is set to be a big, flashy event—but it could have been even bigger. Several highly anticipated films that were once expected to premiere at the Lido this September will now not be showing. These include Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise; Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, with Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg; David Fincher’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood spin-off, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, featuring Brad Pitt; Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven, which would have marked Adele’s acting debut; and Tony Gilroy’s awards hopeful Behemoth!, led by Pedro Pascal—just to name a few.
Still, the lineup for the 83rd edition—running from September 2 to 12, with Maggie Gyllenhaal as jury president, and George Clooney and 93-year-old screen legend Ellen Burstyn set to receive lifetime achievement awards—is packed with stars. There are fast-paced thrillers, dizzying comedies, and, as always at Venice, several headline-grabbing documentaries. (These include a short co-directed by Laura Poitras about ICE, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s four-hour study of Elon Musk, a seven-hour Bernardo Bertolucci documentary by Luca Guadagnino, and a look at Oasis’s recent reunion tour, told by both Gallagher brothers.) Here are the 10 films you need to watch.
Wild Horse Nine
The one seemingly surefire awards contender on this list is Martin McDonagh’s pitch-black comedy. His last two films—2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin and 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri—both turned Venice premieres into awards success, earning two Oscars and 16 nominations between them. This one is just as star-studded and timely. Set among the mysterious, giant statues of Easter Island, just before the 1973 Chilean coup, it follows two freewheeling CIA agents (John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell) who plan to overthrow the national government. When they get tangled up with two rebellious students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas), chaos erupts. Parker Posey, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Waits round out the supporting cast.
Bunker
The first couple of Spanish cinema, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, are back together in what should be a standout film. Oscar-winning filmmaker Florian Zeller (The Father, The Son) puts them at the heart of his new family saga: a psychological thriller about an architect hired to build an impenetrable, top-secret bunker for a billionaire tech mogul. The project takes over his life, strains his marriage, and slowly tears his family apart. Expect tight writing and typically explosive performances, including from supporting actors Paul Dano, Stephen Graham, and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
Bucking Fastard
Photo: Courtesy Bucking Fastard
It’s been a long, tough road for Werner Herzog. His latest oddity—a hallucinatory puzzle about codependent twin sisters (Rooney and Kate Mara, marking the first time the real-life siblings appear on screen together)—was offered a spot at Cannes earlier this year. But the director turned it down because it wouldn’t have allowed him to compete for the Palme d’Or. Now, he’s in the running for the Golden Lion instead. This is the wild story of Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who speak in unison, share the same dreams, love the same man (Orlando Bloom—fair enough), and live on the fringes of society. After they’re assigned a government social worker (Domhnall Gleeson) to help them adjust to modern life, they, for some reason, start digging a tunnel through a mountain range to find an imaginary land where true love is possible. It doesn’t get more Herzog than that.
Ink
Photo: Courtesy Netflix
James Graham’s 2017 play of the same name, which told the story of Rupert Murdoch and The Sun’s rise in the late 1960s, is being brought to the screen.Brought to the big screen by Oscar winner Danny Boyle, in his first major awards-focused drama since 2015’s Steve Jobs. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, and Jack O’Connell stars as Larry Lamb, an editor at the Daily Mail whom the media mogul hires as the new editor-in-chief of The Sun, after buying the struggling paper from its parent, The Mirror. Claire Foy also appears as Jules Davies, Lamb’s fictional wife and the paper’s deputy editor. What follows is an all-out race to maximize profits, planting the seeds for today’s sensationalist tabloid culture.
Possible Love
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
If you were blown away by Lee Chang-dong’s mesmerizing 2018 Korean thriller Burning, you’ll be glad to hear the director is finally returning with another deep look at intimate relationships. This time, he focuses on a connected group of four: a recently laid-off worker and his wife, and a documentary filmmaker and her husband, who come together to make a movie that gradually reveals their most private desires. The cast is stellar—Cho Yeo-jeong from Parasite, Zo In-sung from Hope, Sul Kyung-gu from Oasis, and Jeon Do-yeon from Secret Sunshine—and the mind games they play with each other are inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog. The last buzzy film festival entry to take cues from that was Asghar Farhadi’s widely panned Parallel Tales at Cannes—here’s hoping this one does much better.
Primetime
Robert Pattinson transforms into the stiff, unreadable Chris Hansen from To Catch a Predator in this story ripped from the headlines, the narrative feature directorial debut of Ren Faire‘s Lance Oppenheim. 2006 was the peak of that gripping, stomach-churning 2000s TV phenomenon—a series of sting operations set up by the host and his crew with police support, using young-looking decoys to trap and arrest alleged pedophiles, drawing millions of viewers. But Hansen and his team’s relentless chase for bigger, juicier stories and higher-profile targets soon turned disastrous. With Ari Aster among the film’s producers and Phoebe Bridgers in the cast for her formal acting debut, it feels like the kind of unconventional biopic only A24 would make.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger
The most heartwarming story of 2025 is coming to the big screen, thanks to writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) and music documentary directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern. More than a decade after their messy breakup, Oasis’s Noel and Liam Gallagher reconciled, reunited, and set off on a global tour—a deeply emotional experience for fans who had given up hope that day would ever come. This behind-the-scenes look takes us inside the band’s rehearsals, follows them on the road, and notably includes the brothers’ first joint interviews in over 25 years. Best of all, Venice Film Festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera has confirmed that the Gallaghers will actually promote the movie together on the Lido. Can you imagine that press conference? I can’t think of anything more surreal or potentially chaotic.
The Echo Chamber
Photo: Indigo Film Versus
Alicia Vikander, Susan Sarandon, and Luca Marinelli star in this poetic exploration of love, longing, and obsession from Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro (who directed Hannah, for which Charlotte Rampling won Venice’s Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 2017). The screenplay is by Bernardo Bertolucci—the last one the film legend wrote before his death eight years ago—and follows a prolific music producer struggling with addiction who begins an unlikely affair with a mysterious physiotherapist. Filled with music, it looks set to be a fitting tribute to the late director.
Place to Be
The recent films of Hungarian auteur Kornél Mundruczó have been inconsistent at best—the Vanessa Kirby-led nerve-shredder Pieces of a Woman was a standout, but others have fallen flat.A woman from 2020 was praised, but his latest film, At the Sea, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and stars Amy Adams, was not. So it’s hard to judge the quality of this out-of-competition entry, even though it looks impressive on paper. Ellen Burstyn leads as a no-nonsense woman in her nineties who befriends a confused divorcé (Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning director of Jojo Rabbit, returning to acting) as they travel from Chicago to New York to—wait for it—return a lost racing pigeon. Pamela Anderson, Édgar Ramírez, Lena Waithe, and The White Lotus‘s Murray Bartlett round out this star-studded, Hollywood-friendly cast.
Flesh Impact
Ellen Burstyn also anchors this moving 17-minute short from Venice’s jury president, Maggie Gyllenhaal, described as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe on the 100th anniversary of her birth. Dakota Johnson plays the 1950s screen icon at the height of her fame—at 36, the actor is exactly the age Monroe was when she tragically died from a barbiturate overdose—while Burstyn plays the veteran performer Marilyn never got to become. As a deeper look at the myth of Marilyn and the misunderstandings that still surround her, it promises to be a powerful and thought-provoking watch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the 10 things we cant wait to see at the 2026 Venice Film Festival written in a natural conversational tone
General BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What exactly is the Venice Film Festival
Its one of the oldest and most famous film festivals in the world held every year on the Lido island in Venice Italy Its where major new movies premiere often before they hit theaters
2 Why is everyone so excited about the 2026 festival specifically
Because the lineup is rumored to include highly anticipated sequels bigbudget auteur projects and a return of major directors who havent released a film in years Its shaping up to be a landmark year
3 What do you mean by 10 things we cant wait to see
Thats a preview list of the most buzzworthy films events or surprises expected at the festivallike a new Christopher Nolan movie a surprise documentary or a major celebrity appearance
4 How do you know what will be shown in 2026 if the festival hasnt happened yet
The list is based on confirmed production schedules insider reports and studio announcements Its a mix of sure things and strong rumors that industry insiders are tracking
Intermediate Practical Questions
5 Are all 10 things movies or are there other events
Most are films but the list often includes special events like a restored classic a surprise concert or a virtual reality installation thats debuting alongside the main competition
6 How can I actually watch any of these 10 things if Im not in Venice
You cant attend the premiere but many of these films will release in theaters or on streaming platforms a few months after the festival Keep an eye on release dates for late 2026 and early 2027
7 Whats the one thing on the list thats most likely to win an award
Industry buzz usually points to one or two frontrunnersoften a serious drama or a director who has won before The 2026 list likely includes a prestige film that critics will be talking about for the entire award season
8 Why would a filmmaker choose to premiere at Venice instead of Cannes or Toronto
Venice is