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The Venice Film Festival, the worlds second most significant film event after Cannes, prepares for its 93rd edition featuring premieres from Martin McDonagh, Danny Boyle, and Werner Herzog. Saoirse Ronan will debut her directorial short Paper Plane at the festival, which has evolved from an art-house showcase into a key Oscars launching pad alongside Telluride and Toronto. Organizers note fewer starry English-language productions this year following mixed reviews of 2025 titles like After the Hunt and Jay Kelly, with the controversial inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovskys Dau in the Golden Lion competition also drawing attention.
New movies from Martin McDonagh, Danny Boyle and Werner Herzog will also take centre stage at Italian event Saoirse Ronan has made the plunge into directing with her first short, Paper Plane, which will receive its world premiere at the Venice film festival.
Photograph: Celeste Sloman/New York TimesFirst held in 1932, the event evolved into, after Cannes, the second most significant film festival on the calendar. Previous winners of the Golden Lion, its top prize for a feature, include such classics as Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.
Movie stars, aware the atmosphere is less hectic than at the French bash, have always enjoyed arriving to the Lido in those lovely varnished speedboats while waving blithely at sea and sky. Art-house fare dominated until the past decade or so, when Venice solidified its role as launching pad for the Oscars. Venice is now the first of an overlapping trifecta completed by Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado, and Toronto International Film Festival.
But…We had the same conversation a few months ago about Cannes. It does seem as if there are fewer starry English-language productions than last year. Some have blamed the mixed reviews that, in 2025, went the way of Venice titles such as Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly. What do Irish experts think about controversial ADHD claims?
But, looking at the calendar, not a huge number of potential glossy alternatives are premiering elsewhere. Maybe the Americans are taking a year off from the sort of titles that suit the Adriatic and Mediterranean bun fights.
There has been controversy about the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau, an epic following the career of a Soviet nuclear physicist over four decades, in the race for the Golden Lion The festival lures two greats to pick up Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. Ellen Burstyn, now 93, will be recognised for legendary performances in such films as The Exorcist and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
, whose film-star character in Jay Kelly was similarly honoured at an Italian event, will surely feel some deja vu as he picks up his Lion. Plenty. Saoirse Ronan makes the plunge into directing with her first short. Titled Paper Plane, the film, receiving its world premiere, stars Martha Malone, Clare Dunne and Tim Creed in a Keeper Pictures and Una Pictures production.
Katie Holly, of Keeper, producer of two films from Sophie Fiennes on the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, returns with coproducer Evan Horan to that Slovenian eccentric for The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias. Fiennes’s latest has the great man again espousing his views on film, music and social media. Irish interest at Venice film festival 2026: Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard and more Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, filmed in Ireland, is stuffed with Irish actors.
Martin McDonagh, of Sligo and Galway stock, will be flying the flag with Wild Horse Nine. So on those…There are interesting omens in Herzog’s progress to the Lido. Earlier this year, Variety reported that the characteristically off-centre film was offered an out-of-competition slot at Cannes – arguably a step down from the Palme d’Or race – and that this was turned down before Bucking Fastard was accepted for the main competition in Venice.
’s Father Mother Sister Briother, partly shot in Dublin, took exactly the same route to Venice and ended up winning the Palme d’Or. Shot in Dublin and Co Kildare, Bucking Fastard stars the Mara sisters as eccentric twins who become obsessed with their neighbour.
“I can’t wait to see it,” Gleeson told me. “I love the look of it. ”McDonagh has had a happy time at the Lido. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won best screenplay in 2017.
Colin Farrell won best actor for The Banshees of Inisherin in 2022. The new film stars Malkovich and Rockwell as CIA agents dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the Chilean coup that put Augusto Pinochet in power in 1973. Wild Horse Nine: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in Martin McDonagh's film.
Photograph: Diego Araya Corvalán/Searchlight Pictures The good people at Searchlight Pictures puffed: “It’s a privilege to work again with the incomparable Martin McDonagh who, with Wild Horse Nine, once again masterfully blends emotional nuance with razor-sharp dark comedy. ”There has been some controversy about the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau, an epic following the career of a Soviet nuclear physicist over four decades, in the race for the Golden Lion.
Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as the world’s most powerful man, seems to be skipping all three big festivals In mid-August the Ukrainian ministries of culture and foreign affairs issued a joint statement criticising the inclusion.
“The project was financed by Sergei Adoniev, a Russian businessman sanctioned by both the United States and Ukraine and credibly linked to Putin’s regime,” the document noted. Alberto Barbera, festival director, quickly issued a rebuttal.
“Dau is not a Russian film,” he wrote. “It is not pro-Putin propaganda. It is a film that denounces totalitarian regimes. ” The case continues.
, proud sons of Peggy from Co Mayo, will be on the Lido for the premiere of Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger. Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, the film follows the band as they reunite for that hugely successful tour in 2025. It features the first joint interview with the Gallagher brothers in 15 years. Pattinson stars as Chris Hanson, host of the controversial reality-TV show To Catch a Predator, in Primetime.
So what is Venice missing from the incoming awards season? As we mentioned above, for all the gnashing of teeth, there were few obvious options that Barbera missed. Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Digger, starringis already hotly tipped as an Oscar contender for the latter film, which deals with Ian Charleson playing Hamlet on the London stage in 1989 following his Aids diagnosis. Once again, we call up the Oscar tipster Neil Young.
The Vienna-based film programmer installs the documentary Naza, a late entry from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, as a rare odds-on favourite, at 4/6. The directors, who worked on the Oscar-winning No Other Land, from 2025, return to Gaza to detail the “systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians”. Neil has Wild Horse Nine as second favourite, at 9/2.
Then Primetime and Woman Unknown, from the Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, both at 12/1. Domhnall Gleeson: ‘My life in Ireland means too much to me. It’s no sacrifice to live here’Actor Olwen Fouéré: ‘I firmly believe we are in the last days of the Anthropocene’Van Morrison at Electric Picnic: Not quite an old snuggly blanket, but when he’s this good he’s wonderful A Wicklow woman in Marbella: ‘I would make friends in the summer and they would then go home.
But I found my tribe’Farmer Phil: ‘The story goes that a tree in our field was planted by Cromwell’s grandchildren 350, 400 years ago’
Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Saoirse Ronan Martin Mcdonagh Danny Boyle
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