Venice Film Festival turns to politics as Hollywood retreats

VENICE: Hollywood is struggling with an industry crisis and has largely withdrawn from this year’s Venice Film Festival, making way for a programme steeped in global politics and social upheaval, the event’s director said on Tuesday.

Festival director Alberto Barbera said the gritty line-up reflected filmmakers’ growing engagement with contemporary events, ranging from the conflict in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the rise of billionaires and immigration enforcement in the United States.

The world’s oldest film festival, which begins on Wednesday and runs until September 12, traditionally marks the start of the awards season, but many of the studio-backed Oscar contenders that once crowded its schedule are absent, just as they were from 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.”

Film insiders say tighter budgets have curbed the studios’ enthusiasm for costly Venice premieres. They are also wary of savage reviews such as those that sunk the “Joker” sequel at Venice in 2024 before they could push it before a paying public.

Red carpet star power

Yet Venice will not be short of star power. George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will collect lifetime achievement awards, while Robert Pattinson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, John Malkovich and Rooney Mara are all expected on the Lido.

British rock stars Liam and Noel Gallagher will also make an appearance for the premiere of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, a documentary about Oasis and the band’s reunion.

The 2026 programme includes new films from high-profile directors, including Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller, Danny Boyle and Werner Herzog, who will all be vying for the Golden Lion Award.

The Festival opens with Boyle’s “Ink,” a drama about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 takeover of Britain’s The Sun tabloid, which helped launch his global media empire.

Barbera tipped the film as an Oscar hopeful, as well as movies by South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda and Shinya Tsukamoto, another Japanese filmmaker who is presenting an English-language story about the Vietnam War, “Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?”

Directors increasingly favour documentaries

As Barbera and his team sifted through a record 4,500 entries for the festival, they discovered filmmakers were increasingly turning their lenses on global issues such as war, migration, climate change and democratic strain.

Barbera said he was struck not just by the number, but by the increasing quality of documentaries.

“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 war in Gaza is particularly prominent. Films that address the conflict and its human toll include the documentary “NAZA”, by the Israeli duo 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.”