Today, Wednesday 9 September 2026, the eighth day of the 83rd edition of the Venice Biennale International Film Festival opens.
Among the 21 films in competition are Un Bon Petit Soldat by Stéphane Brizé and starring Alba Rohrwacher, The Fire You Carry Inside by Edoardo De Angelis and starring Vanessa Scalera and Lino Musella, and DAU by Ilya Khrzhanovsky.
Out of Competition are the films Non Fiction Union Town by Barbara Kopple and Listy (Letters from the Silenced Country) by Andrei Kutsila, Fiction Place to Be by Kornél Mundruczó and with Ellen Burstyn, Taika Waititi and Pamela Anderson, and Film on Films Joie de Vivre (Part 2) by Luca Guadagnino.
In the Orizzonti section there are the films La Moula (Moolah) by Jerôme Pierrat and The Color of the Sun by Xavíer Tera.
In the Venice Spotlight section there is the film Jury by Levan Koguashvili.
In the Venice Classics section there are the films English, August by Dev Benegal and Ugly, Dirty and Bad by Ettore Scola.
In the Giornate degli Autori section there are the films If Hell Also Comes by Samuele Rossi and Camouflage by Mykyta Gibalenko.
In the Critics' Week section there are the films Granchità by Anaïs Landriscina and Chiara Toffoletto and Halaa (The H@llow Man) by Kamel Laaridhi.
Presented in the Orizzonti section of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, La Moula marks the feature film debut of the French journalist and documentary maker Jérôme Pierrat, who has specialized for years in the story of organized crime. Filmed in the form of a mockumentary, the film blends realism and tension by following a reporter who manages to infiltrate a gang of traffickers determined to recover a huge load of cocaine in the port of Marseille.
Pierrat plays a version of himself and transforms his experience as a reporter into a thriller with a strong documentary flavour, where the boundary between investigation and fiction becomes increasingly thin. A debut that brings to the Lido an authentic look at the great French banditry and its gray areas.
Finally, Out of Competition, in the Film on Films subsection, there is Joie de Vivre (Part 2) by Luca Guadagnino.
“Joie de Vivre” was an expression particularly dear to Bernardo Bertolucci, who often used it to evoke both the lightness that makes life beautiful and the enchantment and beauty of filmmaking. The documentary starts from my personal bond with Bernardo and his work, and then opens up to a comparison with some of his closest collaborators and most passionate followers. Together we will explore the legacy of Bertolucci's cinema: how his films are able to revolutionize the very idea of the seventh art - especially in those who have yet to discover them - and why certain critical interpretations consolidated over time have proven profoundly short-sighted and, ultimately, misleading. It is a long journey that stops in various corners of the world, to meet Bertolucci's historic producer, Jeremy Thomas, alongside exceptional filmmakers, scholars and cinephiles who share the same aspiration as the master: the courage to conceive of cinema not as a phenomenon limited to a local or national scale, but as a cosmopolitan and borderless language.
Also Out of Competition, in the Fiction subsection, there is Place to Be by Kornél Mundruczó.
Place to Be is a light-hearted road movie about the unexpected friendship between an elderly woman and a mature man, traveling from Chicago to New York to return Intruder, a lost racing pigeon, to its rightful owner.
Brooke Graham, a gentle and reserved woman, dedicated her life to her children after the death of her husband. His peaceful daily life is turned upside down by an unexpected presence: a racing pigeon that persists in not wanting to leave his home. Unable to abandon the animal to its fate, Brooke embarks on a quixotic undertaking. Along the way he finds an unlikely travel companion in Nelson Green, a businessman who, after a succession of personal and professional adversities, struggles to get back on top. United by a bird that neither of them would ever have believed they could grow fond of, Brooke and Nelson slowly develop a complicity that will help them face their regrets, find direction and ask themselves: is it ever too late to chase the life we really want?
Also out of Competition is the film Listy (Letters from the Silenced Country) by Andrei Kutsila.
Listy is a portrait of contemporary Belarus through the stories of people who have known prison, repression and exile: voices silenced by an autocratic regime. Each story offers a different experience. A father goes into hiding to escape surveillance and avoid arrest and separation from his daughter. A former investigator decides to abandon the system, leaves Belarus and, in exile in Poland, faces repeated interrogations and a growing sense of immobility and helplessness. Kasia, a young student convicted for participating in a protest, finds in drawing a way to survive, preserve her identity and express what cannot be said openly. We also meet Vitold, fifty years old, whose story takes shape through the photographs that a friend sends him from his country: carefully chosen fragments of a world beyond the prison walls, capable of offering him moments of freedom and revealing not only what is seen, but also what remains invisible. Combining observation footage, archive and repertoire materials, testimonies and animations created from drawings created in prison, the film transforms a private correspondence into a cinematic space of intimacy, dignity and reflection, questioning the meaning of sacrifice and solidarity and the human cost of resistance in a country reduced to silence.
Out of Competition is the Non Fiction film Union Town by Barbara Kopple.
After Harlan County U.S.A. and American Dream, Union Town completes Barbara Kopple's trilogy dedicated to workers' rights. The film follows the last mile delivery sector in New York, highlighting the fundamental role of those who work there in a moment of extraordinary rebirth of the union movement in the largest metropolis in the United States. Through the union struggles within UPS, Amazon and the network of digital platform riders, Union Town returns a portrait of contemporary work and new forms of collective organization. Filmed over three years, the film questions the meaning of solidarity in a world divided between those who hold power and those who must fight to gain it.
Particularly intense day at the Venice Film Festival, lashed by bad weather. Entering the competition are the French film Un Bon Petit Soldat by Stéphane Brizé, DAU by the Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky and the Italian film The Fire That You Bring Inside by Edoardo De Angelis.
De Angelis' film, based on the novel of the same name by Antonio Franchini, stars Vanessa Scalera and Lino Musella as protagonists. At the centre, the story of Antonio, who left Naples to build a family and a career in Milan, and his mother Angela, who returns to his life during the Christmas holidays.
Then it will be the turn of Dau, set in the Soviet Union and inspired by the figure of the physicist Lev Landau. The film follows four decades of Soviet history and the relationship between science, power, control and the state apparatus. The presence of the film sparked controversy in Ukraine, which accused it of representing pro-Russian propaganda: accusations rejected by the Biennale and the director.
Un Bon Petit Soldat will also arrive in the evening with Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon. The protagonist is a company manager called to reconcile the well-being of employees with the company's performance objectives, until she is confronted with a case of toxic management.
Out of Competition is Place to Be by Kornél Mundruczó, with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement won by Ellen Burstyn, Taika Waititi and Pamela Anderson. A story of travel and encounters built around an elderly woman and a man who set out to return a carrier pigeon.
Finally, the film DAU by Ilya Khrzhanovsky is also in competition.
Inspired by the physicists who helped build the Soviet atomic bomb, DAU follows the path of a brilliant Greek-born physicist from 1928 in the Soviet Union through four decades of upheaval. Driven by the desire to discover the laws of the universe, the idealist Dau is called into the service of the State to create one of the most lethal weapons in history. In a secret research institute, life is governed by scientific ambition, power, surveillance and privilege. As his individual freedom is reduced, Dau seeks elsewhere, outside of marriage, a form of liberation through a series of relationships, ending up losing himself and his ability to love. An intimate portrait of a man in search of happiness and freedom, and at the same time a vast fresco of a society founded on violence and ideology, DAU tells of the compromises that shape an existence and end up changing the course of history.
Also in competition is the film The fire that you carry inside by Edoardo De Angelis and with Vanessa Scalera and Lino Musella.
Antonio, who fled from Naples many years ago, has built a family and a successful career in Milan, far from his mother Angela, an exaggerated woman for better or for worse, irresistible, ancient and hostile like few others, who joined him for Christmas and seems determined to stay. Christmas Eve dinner thus becomes an emotional, comical and ferocious battlefield at the same time, which brings to light a past of oppression and misunderstandings. With a tenacious capon that doesn't want to end up in the pot, a daughter who doesn't know if she'll ever arrive and an illustrious unexpected guest, the evening turns into a showdown between mother and son destined to change the meaning of their bond forever: a love that burns inside like a fire and that never burns out, not even by leaving.
