分类： entertainment

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.

The lazy, slow days of August usually put Hollywood’s glitzy annual calendar on pause, but the 83rd Venice Film Festival is poised to launch the busy fall festival circuit with its signature blend of red carpet glamour, boundary-pushing cinema, and industry drama when it opens Wednesday on the historic Lido waterfront.

A-list stars from across the globe are set to walk the iconic festival’s red carpets this year, with names including Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, Robert Pattinson, Rooney Mara, George Clooney and Penélope Cruz confirmed to attend. Clooney and veteran actress Ellen Burstyn will also take center stage to accept lifetime achievement Golden Lions, capping decades of acclaimed work in film. For decades, the Venice Film Festival has served as a launching pad for awards season contenders, and industry observers already expect several of this year’s entries to earn Oscar nods in the coming months.

But unlike past editions, much of the global conversation surrounding this year’s lineup centers not on A-list contenders or future blockbusters, but on a high-profile subject who will almost certainly not be in attendance: billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. The core of this attention stems from Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour investigative film, which has been four years in the making. Gibney initially hesitated to take on the project, but a close friend persuaded him that a deep dive into Musk’s life and career would offer a revealing portrait of power in the 21st century — a project that gained even more cultural relevance ahead of its release amid Musk’s high-profile involvement in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and his controversial leadership of social platform X (formerly Twitter), tied to his DOGE cryptocurrency initiative.

When the documentary was first announced, Musk took to social media to dismiss it as a biased “hit piece.” Gibney quickly pushed back, asking publicly, “How would you know?” In comments to The Associated Press, Gibney shared that he began the project as an admirer of Musk’s work — and even a Tesla owner — and extended multiple invitations for Musk to participate in the film on camera.

“Ultimately, he didn’t want to talk to me,” Gibney said. “But then you start digging into the facts and you follow them where they lead. And where they led, for me, was to a place that upended the myth, I would say, of Elon Musk as a kind of modern Leonardo da Vinci … I think that the news in this film is that Musk isn’t an inventor. He’s a confidence man.”

Gibney and his team conducted interviews with hundreds of people with direct knowledge of Musk’s career at Tesla and SpaceX, many of whom spoke only off the record. The director compared Musk to fallen disgraced corporate leaders such as Enron’s executives and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Gibney added that he was most struck by how many sources — even self-described Musk supporters — refused to speak on the record without first seeking Musk’s permission to comment.

“I thought, wow, for such a big and powerful person, that seems awfully weak,” Gibney noted. While the film tackles a “dark and dangerous topic,” Gibney described it as a compelling, engaging “fun ride” for audiences.

Musk’s documentary is not the only timely, politically charged work headlining this year’s nonfiction lineup. Julia Loktev’s *My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile*, a nearly six-hour follow-up to her 2020s documentary, continues her sprawling portrait of independent Russian journalists who fled their home country after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“You see this group of young, very young journalists who’ve just fled their country, on a few hours’ notice. They had the choice of, you know, stop reporting the truth about the war, which didn’t seem like a choice at all, or go to prison, or leave the country so they can keep telling the truth,” Loktev explained. “It was a question of how long do you keep following? Because this takes place over four years. And over that time, exile becomes, of course, indefinite.” Despite its extended run time, Loktev says the documentary holds audience attention: “I hear it goes by easy.”

The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza will also take a prominent spot in the lineup, with the new documentary *NAZA* added as a late entry to the main competition. The film comes from two of the creators behind the Oscar-winning documentary *No Other Land*. Unlike the 2024 edition of the festival, no large-scale public protests have been organized, but advocacy group Venice4Palestine has called on festival leadership to “suspend all agreements with entities and institutions linked to the Israeli government” and fly the Palestinian flag across festival grounds throughout the event.

Beyond documentary, the festival’s narrative lineup includes a number of awards contenders vying for early Oscar momentum. The Venice Film Festival has a long track record of launching best picture nominees, and this year’s slate includes several high-profile projects from award-winning filmmakers. Martin McDonagh, whose last two features premiered at Venice before earning multiple Oscar nominations, returns with *Wild Horse Nine*, a 1970s-set CIA comedy starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. Oscar-winning *The Father* director Florian Zeller brings his new psychological thriller *Bunker*, which stars Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Danny Boyle examines a key turning point in tabloid journalism history with *Ink*, while Lance Oppenheim’s *Primetime* has drawn significant curiosity for Robert Pattinson’s lead performance as *To Catch a Predator* host Chris Hansen and its deep dive into early 2000s reality TV culture.

International cinema also features heavily in this year’s main competition. Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda debuts *Look Back*, a coming-of-age story following two small-town teenage girls chasing their dream of becoming professional manga artists. Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong explores class, labor and romantic desire through the intersecting lives of two married couples in *Possible Love*.

Notably, the 2025 festival comes at a moment when major Hollywood studios have increasingly pulled back on relying on international film festivals to build buzz for awards contenders. The 2025 Cannes Film Festival had no major studio blockbusters in its lineup, yet Hollywood went on to post one of the highest-grossing summer seasons in history. Last year’s best picture winner *One Battle After Another* skipped the entire festival circuit entirely. While Venice booked more Hollywood titles than Cannes this year, the overall buzz around awards contenders is far more muted than in years past, after multiple high-profile entries saw their Oscar prospects fizzle prematurely in recent seasons.

Beneath the glamour and awards buzz, the 2025 edition also spotlights a long-unfulfilled promise the festival made to advance gender equity behind the camera. Just one of the 21 films in this year’s main competition is directed by a woman: Danish-Egyptian filmmaker May El-Toukhy. This mirrors the 2018 lineup, which also had only one female director in competition. That 2018 lack of representation prompted the festival to sign a public pledge promising that at least 50 percent of main competition films would be directed by women by 2020 — a goal it has yet to meet seven years later.

The lack of representation stings even more given that actress-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose 2021 feature *The Lost Daughter* won the festival’s best screenplay award, is this year’s main competition jury president. One of her fellow jurors is Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, whose film *The Voice of Hind Rajab* won the Silver Lion in 2024, a year when six competition films were directed by women. In the history of the festival, only seven women have ever won the top prize, the Golden Lion.

Outside the main competition, representation is far better. The independent Venice Days sidebar, which opens this year with Hungarian director Lili Horvát’s English-language debut *My Notes on Mars*, has more than half of its 2025 lineup directed by women, including high-profile short films from established auteurs including Mona Fastvold and Claire Denis. Horvát called it “good to be in a progressive section.”

Global pop icon Celine Dion has returned to Paris to kick off her highly anticipated comeback run of live shows, marking her first full concert series since publicly revealing her diagnosis of rare neurological condition stiff-person syndrome. The Grammy-winning artist received a rapturous welcome from adoring fans and assembled media on Friday as she arrived at her central Paris hotel, blowing kisses and forming a heart shape with her hands to greet the cheering crowd. Supporters packed the sidewalk outside the venue, shouting messages of love and excitement including declarations that they were overjoyed to see her back in public.

Dion is currently preparing for a 16-show residency at Plenitude Arena, located in Paris’ western suburbs, with opening night scheduled for September 12. The residency will run across September and October 2024, followed by an additional 10 shows scheduled for May 2025, all under the official tour banner “Celine Dion Paris 2026-2027”. Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV, the 58-year-old Quebec-born singer opened up about her emotions ahead of the landmark shows. “I am ready and I’m a bit uptight of course because it’s been a long time,” Dion explained, noting that Paris has long felt like a second home to her. “I have always felt supported from the first day and because it’s a story that continues. It’s true that this is my second home.” When asked to reveal which track would open the first show, Dion playfully kept fans guessing: “I can’t say, it’s a big secret!”

This concert run stands as a major milestone in Dion’s career, coming after nearly three years away from full-scale touring. The singer first announced her stiff-person syndrome diagnosis in 2022, and later canceled her planned Courage World Tour as her symptoms progressed, leading her to step back from regular public performances. She made a celebrated, brief return to the global stage earlier this summer during the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, where she delivered a haunting performance of *Hymne à l’amour* from the top of the Eiffel Tower, singing through a rainstorm to an audience of millions that spread widely across social media and news outlets.

One of the most commercially successful and acclaimed artists in modern pop music history, Dion has sold nearly 260 million albums worldwide across her decades-long career. She is globally renowned for signature hits including *My Heart Will Go On* and *Because You Loved Me*, and the upcoming Paris residency will draw from her extensive catalog of chart-topping tracks in both English and French. Plenitude Arena, the venue for the shows, is a 40,000-capacity facility that also served as one of the competition venues during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Against the persistent rumble of distant conflict and the ever-present threat of Russian air strikes, Kyiv is preparing to stage a radical, deeply personal reimagining of Homer’s ancient *Odyssey* that weaves Ukraine’s ongoing wartime struggle into the 3,000-year-old epic. Titled *Odysseus, Maeotis*, the new production hits the stage of Kyiv’s Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater at a moment when Homer’s classic is already enjoying a global cultural spotlight, buoyed by Christopher Nolan’s big-budget IMAX blockbuster *The Odyssey* starring Matt Damon, a box office hit that has introduced the ancient tale to new international audiences.

Unlike Hollywood’s big-screen adaptation, however, this Ukrainian production draws its raw material directly from the front lines of the ongoing war. Its cast blends professional performers with active-duty Ukrainian soldiers, with the lead role of Odysseus, the warrior king desperate to return home after a decade of conflict, played by Daniil Mireshkin, a serving member of Ukraine’s 1st Corps Azov. For Mireshkin, the fusion of ancient myth and modern Ukrainian reality creates unflinching, vital parallels to the issues defining his country today.

“This combination of myth and modernity allows us to draw parallels and understand just how critical the question of return is: the return of military personnel to civilian life, the return of our territories and the return of ourselves to our true identity as Ukrainians,” Mireshkin explained in an interview with the Associated Press following a final rehearsal Tuesday. The play’s premiere has already been pushed back multiple times, delayed by successive waves of Russian attacks on Kyiv – a disruption that itself mirrors the endless, uncertain waiting the story explores.

“This story helps us talk about these topics, which, as it turns out, haven’t lost any of their relevance,” Mireshkin added.

The production strips Homer’s original text to its core narrative bones, retaining only the central arc of Odysseus’s long, punishing journey home and his wife Penelope’s equally grueling wait in Ithaca. Director Ivan Uryvskyi said the play was written entirely from scratch, reworking the epic’s timeless themes of return, exile and captivity to fit Ukraine’s current reality.

“Of course, very little of Homer’s original text remains here, because the play was written from scratch. We simply took the core narrative arc — Odysseus’ return home,” Uryvskyi said.

Even the play’s title carries layered modern meaning: Maeotis is the ancient Greek name for the Sea of Azov, the body of water off Ukraine’s southern coast that was once considered the edge of the known ancient world. The Sea of Azov is home to Mariupol, the devastated port city that fell to Russian forces after a devastating 2022 siege, and the production draws heavily on firsthand accounts from Azov brigade defenders who held the city. Today, around 600 Azov brigade servicemen remain held as prisoners of war in Russian captivity, out of thousands of Ukrainian captives.

Playwright Oleksii Dorychevskyi, also a member of 1st Corps Azov, spent a year conducting interviews with former Ukrainian prisoners of war to build the play’s narrative. For Daryna Leheida, the professional actress who plays Penelope, Odysseus’s faithful wife, the ancient queen’s decades-long wait for her husband mirrors the lived experience of millions of Ukrainian women today.

“It’s about the fate of Ukrainian women who wait, believe and hope, but who can also feel powerless, hopeless and stripped of faith,” Leheida said. Beyond the fates of individual soldiers and their families, the story extends to the land itself: “It’s about the temporarily occupied land waiting to come back home. It’s about the children and people who are waiting, what we face during this waiting and the toll that war takes on us.”

The staging reflects the bleak uncertainty of wartime Ukraine, with a deliberately austere, unsettling design. Against a darkened set accented by glowing neon light bars, projections are cast directly onto the performers’ bodies. Homer’s iconic mythical monsters – the one-eyed Cyclops, the deadly enchanting sirens – have been replaced by modern symbols of war: buzzing drones that glide across the stage and scale models of robotic killing machines, turning ancient dangers into the threats that Ukrainians face every day.