The world’s oldest major film celebration, the 83rd Venice Film Festival, is set to open its doors to A-list celebrities, acclaimed filmmakers, and awards hopefuls on Wednesday on the Italian island of Lido, kicking off the annual fall festival circuit in typical high-profile fashion.
Widely ranked as the second most prestigious film festival on the global calendar, trailing only Cannes, the Venice Film Festival carries a long, storied history dating back to its 1932 founding as a non-competitive event under the umbrella of La Biennale di Venezia. Early screenings included Hollywood classics such as *Grand Hotel* and *It Happened One Night*, before organizers transitioned it to an annual competitive gathering in 1935. Concerns over fascist political influence on the 1938 edition directly spurred the creation of the Cannes Film Festival as an alternative European event. The festival’s iconic top prize, the Golden Lion, was introduced in 1949, and its roll of winners reads as a who’s who of cinema history, from Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 *Rashômon* to last year’s recipient *Father Mother Sister Brother*.
This year’s 12-day iteration will run through September 12, when the main competition jury, led by American actor and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, will announce this year’s award winners. The festival opens with Danny Boyle’s *Ink*, a big-screen adaptation of the hit stage play tracking Rupert Murdoch’s early career and controversial acquisition of British tabloid *The Sun*, starring Guy Pearce in the lead role alongside supporting turns from Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy.
As has become tradition, the 2025 edition draws an extraordinary lineup of global stars, many of whom are attached to buzzy projects already drawing early awards attention ahead of next year’s Oscars. A-list mainstay George Clooney will return to the Lido to accept a lifetime achievement Golden Lion, alongside fellow honoree Ellen Burstyn. Other notable guests confirmed to attend include Oasis’ feuding Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam, sisters Rooney and Kate Mara, Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Pamela Anderson, Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Louis Garrel and *Parasite* star Cho Yeo-jeong.
Among the narrative competition titles, the most heavily anticipated is Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy *Wild Horse Nine*, which follows two CIA operatives in the lead-up to the 1973 Chilean coup, with Rockwell and Malkovich in the lead roles. McDonagh’s two prior works, *Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri* and *The Banshees of Inisherin*, both premiered at Venice before going on to earn Oscar best picture nominations, cementing expectations for this latest entry. The lineup also includes Florian Zeller’s psychological drama *Bunker* starring real-life couple Cruz and Bardem; Werner Herzog’s *Bucking Fastard* featuring the Mara sisters as twin siblings; and revered South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong’s first feature in eight years, *Possible Love*. Robert Pattinson will draw headlines for his portrayal of former *To Catch a Predator* host Chris Hansen in *Primetime*, a project that has already drawn attention for being produced without Hansen’s participation.
The documentary lineup is equally high-profile, anchored by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour deep dive into billionaire Elon Musk, titled simply *Musk*. Other nonfiction entries include Julia Loktev’s continuation of her portrait of independent Russian exiled journalists in *My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile*, and *Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger*, which follows the Gallagher brothers on their highly anticipated 2025 reunion tour. A last-minute addition to the competition lineup also includes *NAZA*, a documentary focusing on the Gaza Strip.
For all its cinematic glamour, the 2025 festival has not escaped the geopolitical tensions that have increasingly disrupted global cultural events in recent years. The most prominent controversy centers on Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s competition entry *DAU*, a project exploring the lives of Soviet atomic physicists. Ukraine’s foreign ministry, culture ministry and Italian embassy have publicly condemned the film’s inclusion, arguing it is tied to Russian state and its influence networks. Festival director Alberto Barbera has pushed back against the criticism, defending the selection in an official statement noting the film “is not a Russian film. It is not pro-Putin propaganda. It is a film that denounces totalitarian regimes and their intrusion into citizens’ lives to restrict their freedom.” Khrzhanovsky has also publicly rejected the claims, stating his opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and calling for the film to be judged on its content rather than unsubstantiated associations. The controversy follows similar unrest at the 2025 Venice Biennale art exhibition earlier this year, where the entire jury resigned in protest over the participation of Russian and Israeli artists.
A second activist campaign, organized by the group Venice4Palestine, is calling on the festival to suspend all formal agreements with Israeli government-linked institutions and fly the Palestinian flag across festival venues throughout the event. Two Palestinian independent films are included in the 2025 official selection. The festival has also faced criticism over gender representation in its main competition: out of 21 features competing for the Golden Lion, only one, *Woman Unknown* directed by May el-Toukhy, is helmed by a woman filmmaker. This marks the first time since 2018 that the competition has included just one woman-directed feature, despite a 2018 commitment from organizers to reach 50% women-directed competition entries by 2020, a goal that has yet to be met.
Beyond the red carpets and controversies, the festival retains its unique character as a cinematic event hosted on Lido, a 11-kilometer barrier island located a 20-minute vaporetto ride from Venice’s historic central districts. Once a 12th-century military outpost, Lido transformed into a luxurious seaside resort popular with European aristocrats by the late 1800s, and served as the setting for Thomas Mann’s classic novella *Death in Venice* and its 1971 film adaptation by Luchino Visconti. Many A-list guests stay in luxury hotels across Venice’s surrounding islands, from the iconic Hotel Excelsior (the only five-star property on Lido) to the Hotel Cipriani on Giudecca, the Gritti Palace, and the Aman Venice — the venue where George and Amal Clooney married in 2014. Most celebrities arrive at premieres and press events via private water taxi, with short trips from nearby hotels sometimes made by sponsored car, a rarity in car-free central Venice.
Beyond glamour and controversy, the Venice Film Festival has cemented itself as one of the most influential stops on the road to the Academy Awards. Festival director Barbera has traced this reputation back to the 2013 premiere of *Gravity*, which went on to win seven Oscars months later. As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has grown more internationally diverse, Venice’s influence on the Oscar race has only expanded: since 2014, four best picture Oscar winners have premiered at the festival, and 2024’s lineup produced two best picture nominees. With this year’s packed slate of star-driven, critically acclaimed projects, that streak looks set to continue.
The jury for the 2025 main competition includes Gyllenhaal alongside Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, English composer Daniel Blumberg, French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli, Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat and Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To. All award winners will be revealed during the closing ceremony on September 12.