All posts tagged: Venice Film Festival

The Possible Oscar Contenders From the Venice and Toronto Film Festival Lineups

The Possible Oscar Contenders From the Venice and Toronto Film Festival Lineups

It’s been six years since a movie that debuted at a fall film festival won the best-picture Oscar. Instead, the past few seasons have seen big studio movies like One Battle After Another or Oppenheimer make it to the Oscar stage without visiting any of the major festivals, while the movies that have emerged from the festival circuit have come from events earlier in the year—like Anora’s trip to Cannes or Everything Everywhere All at Once’s SXSW debut. For a long time, it’s been a firmly held industry belief that releasing your film too early in the year means mounting an Oscar campaign that will be too long, too arduous, and too expensive to pay off. Now that that theory has been dispelled, do fall festivals still hold the same weight in awards season that they used to? Rosalind Eleazar in Misty Green. Merrick Morton/A24 In short: yes. This week on Little Gold Men, the team makes the case for why fall film festivals still matter, especially for smaller movies that need strong word of …

Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn Play Marilyn Monroe in New Short Film

Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn Play Marilyn Monroe in New Short Film

Marilyn Monroe would’ve been 100 years old this summer, and she’s still inspiring big-screen projects. Maggie Gyllenhaal is heading to the Venice Film Festival this September where she will serve as jury president and debut a 17-minute short film called Flesh Impact starring both Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn as versions of the iconic Hollywood star. The milestone birthday is no coincidence as the project was created to honor the moment and was done “with the blessings” of Monroe estate holders Authentic Brands Group. Described in official press materials as “a love letter to one of cinema’s most enduring icons,” Flesh Impact casts Johnson as Monroe at the height of her fame while Burstyn stars as an imagined version of Monroe later in life. (Monroe was 36 when she died on Aug. 4, 1962.) Peter Sarsgaard and The Pitt star Sepideh Moafi round out the cast. The film is produced by William Green for The Cut, Michelle Ross for Superprime, Nicolette Spencer and Melissa Moore for INNOCEAN, and is presented by automotive brand Genesis. Maddi …

Venice Festival unveils 2026 lineup

Venice Festival unveils 2026 lineup

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival is unveiling its official lineup today. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Biennale di Venezia, will confirm the films running in competition and main sidebar sections. You can follow their presentation, starting from 11 am local time at La Biennale Library of the Historical Archive in Venice, on the festival site or on its social media channels on YouTube, X, TikTok, and Facebook. Venice, alongside Cannes, is considered the world’s most prestigious film festival and a major awards season prognosticator. Buttafuoco, who has usually avoided making political statements in reference to the Venice festival, made an exception this time. In his official comments opening the press conference, he lashed out at the European Commission, which this week withdrew a €2 million ($2.8 million) grant earmarked for the La Biennale di Venezia Foundation. The EC took the move to punish Venice’s art Biennale for allowing Russia to return to the event this year, for first time since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in …

Venice Festival unveils 2026 lineup

Danny Boyle’s Murdoch drama Ink to Open Venice Film Festival

Danny Boyle‘s Ink, a drama about Rupert Murdoch’s rise to media power in the world of the U.K. tabloids, will open this year’s Venice Film Festival. Ink will have its world premiere in competition in Venice, opening the 83rd festival on Sept. 2. Guy Pearce stars as Murdoch in the biographical drama, from playwright James Graham, who adapted his Tony-nominated play of the same name for the screen. Jack O’Connell (Sinners) plays Larry Lamb, hired by Murdoch to run his new British tabloid The Sun and transform it into a dark force in British media. Claire Foy plays Jules Davies. This will mark Boyle’s first time on the Lido. “This is my baptism at the film festival,” Boyle said, calling it “a huge honor to be in a city of such extraordinary art and opening this great festival with my new film.” Ink is set in 1969, the year Murdoch and Lamb launched The Sun, a paper that, with it far-right political reporting and populist rabble rousing, became hugely successful and set the template for …

Valérie Donzelli, Carolina Cavalli to Head Venice Sidebar Juries

Valérie Donzelli, Carolina Cavalli to Head Venice Sidebar Juries

Venice has picked the juries for its main sidebar Orizzonti (Horizions) and for its best first feature honor. French director Valérie Donzelli (The Queen of Hearts, Marguerite & Julien) will chair the Orizzonti jury, overseeing a five-person group that will include Criterion Collection/ Janus Films president Peter Becker; U.S./Hong Kong director Elizabeth Lo (Mistress Dispeller), Mexican filmmaker David Pablos (On the Road), and Italian actress Barbara Ronchi (Familia). The Italian filmmaker Carolina Cavalli (Fremont, Amanda) will head up the jury for best first feature, the Luigi De Laurentiis “Lion of the Future” honor. Joining her are the BAFTA-winning British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father’s Shadow) and veteran U.S. producer Ted Hope (The Ice Storm, American Splendor). An actress turned director, Donzelli premiered her first feature The Queen of Hearts (2009), in Locarno. Her follow-up, Declaration of War (2011), opened Cannes’ Critics’ Week. Marguerite & Julien (2015), her first feature, screening in Cannes’ main competition. Her lastest feature, At Work (2025), premiered in Venice competition last year, where it won the best screenplay award. Cavalli’s …

Berlin, Venice Film Festival Director Was 85

Berlin, Venice Film Festival Director Was 85

Moritz de Hadeln, the prolific film festival director who headed up Locarno, Berlin and Venice across a decades-spanning career, has died. He was 85. De Hadeln, who earned the title “Mr. Film Festival” from his biographer and CEO of Zurich Film Festival Christian Jungen, confirmed the Swiss’ death to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. He died in a hospital in Nyon, Switzerland, close to his home on Saturday, July 4, from complications following a recent medical procedure. Born in England in 1940, de Hadeln’s first foray in the industry came as a documentarian and photographer. He directed his first feature, Le Pele, in 1963, and his second film, Ombres et Mirages, came shortly after in 1966. He was a film editor in Zurich alongside Yves Allegret, and worked as an assistant director at CCC Film Studios Berlin. In 1969, de Hadeln and his wife, Erika von dem Hagen, founded the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival (known as the Visions du Reel festival today) which he directed until 1979. Erika took over and led Nyon from 1981 to …

Cassavetes, Buñuel, Rossellini, Roger Corman

Cassavetes, Buñuel, Rossellini, Roger Corman

The 2026 Venice International Film Festival will showcase newly restored works by John Cassavetes, Luis Buñuel, Roberto Rossellini, Andrzej Wajda and Roger Corman in its Venice Classics section. The 19 restored features in this year’s Venice Classics line-up, curated by artistic director Alberto Barbera with Federico Gironi, were unveiled on Friday. The section presents world premiere screenings of restorations completed over the past year by film archives, cultural institutions and production companies from around the world. 2026 Highlights include John Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966), Luis Buñuel’s La Ilusión Viaja en Tranvía (Illusion Travels by Streetcar) (1954), Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy) (1954), Andrzej Wajda’s Popiół i Diament (Ashes and Diamonds) (1958), Roman Polanski‘s Cul-de-sac (1966) and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942). The selection will open with a pre-festival screening of Tinto Brass’ soft-core thriller Col Cuore in Gola (Deadly Sweet) (1967). Italian cinema is further represented by Ettore Scola’s Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi (Ugly, Dirty and Bad) (1976), Daniele Ciprì and …

Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership

Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership

Amazon MGM is no longer partnering with Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino on his forthcoming Sam Altman biopic, Artificial. The nearly completed film, starring Andrew Garfield as the controversial OpenAI founder, was originally slated for release in early 2027. The premiere date, however, is now in limbo after the film was removed from the studio’s roster months after Amazon agreed to expand its $38 billion, multi-year deal to run OpenAI’s systems on its cloud services. The new partnership, announced in February, includes a $50 billion investment in the AI company and the development of customized AI models. “We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker — not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue,” a spokesperson for Amazon said to Variety in a statement. “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.” The Independent has contacted Amazon for further comment. Luca Guadagnino’s next feature …