9 Must-Watch Films at the 2026 Venice Film Festival
From a cinematic take on a controversial TV series to an existential mystery thriller, here are the most buzzworthy titles of the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
As we inch towards the kickoff of the 2026-2027 award season, the Venice Film Festival is set to unveil a fresh crop of Best Picture hopefuls that are sure to provide us with drama, thrills, laughs, and intrigue all the way up to the Oscars. Long seen as a launchpad to Oscar glory, the festival is already facing controversy.
Early last week, the festival announced it would no longer hold its annual jury press conference because of scheduling conflicts. At last year’s festival, jury president Alexander Payne confessed that he was unprepared to answer more pointed questions about the current political environment, so it is no wonder that the 83rd edition was looking for a way to blunt some of the public criticism of its jury members. However, the swift backlash may have discouraged further adjustments. The festival, which planned to hold a cocktail hour for the assembled press and the jury instead of the festival press conference, quickly backtracked and put the conference back on the schedule amid an outcry from the press and attendees.
Once again, the question of politics in film festivals, one that has long been coupled with the events themselves, will now likely be front and center for the press conference in a way that it probably would not have been had they proceeded as usual. Still, the recent brouhaha does not take away from the fact that Venice is still one of the most coveted slots to be invited to if you’re hoping to earn Oscar gold, and this year is no exception. Last year, films like Frankenstein, Bugonia, and The Voice of Hind Rajab translated Venice standing ovations to Oscar nominations and, in some cases, wins.
This year, the same can be said for a new look at Dateline’s famed To Catch a Predator series, Danny Boyle’s latest endeavor, and a return to Venice for filmmakers like Martin McDonagh, Lee Chang-dong, and Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Read on for our picks of the nine buzziest titles set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and be sure to check back for our Scorecard, which will break down all of the best-reviewed films.
Primetime
Anyone watching TV in 2006 will remember the incredible series — landmark and highly watched — To Catch a Predator. Recently, the Sundance Film Festival screened a documentary that tried to dig deeper into the phenomenon that left us as quickly as it arrived, and Primetime looks to go just as deep with a cinematic twist.
In the film, Lance Oppenheim, A24, and star Robert Pattinson aim to give us a narrative peek inside the Dateline NBC series that has spawned countless copycats and remains a talked-about controversial fixture in pop culture nearly 20 years later. In what is an incredible year of performances for Pattinson, we will be watching to see whether it’s his work in this, Dune: Part 3, The Drama, or The Odyssey that leads to his first Oscar nomination. It’s a triumphant year for Pattinson, and we will be sat for this one. And anybody still fascinated with catching a predator is likely to do the same, despite what the subject of Primetime, Chris Hansen himself, would have to say about it.
Bunker
What would you do if you were given a once-in-a-lifetime job that also signaled that the end of the world as we know it was imminent? That is the question that Florian Zeller’s Bunker attempts to answer, and Javier Bardem is the man caught in the middle of the incredibly difficult ethical dilemma. Bardem plays an architect who accepts a secretive job, only to find out he’s been tasked with building a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. The narrative explores the emotional and psychological questions that arise between the billionaire, the architect, and his wife, as the couple realizes the dilemma they’re faced with is an existential one about the future of America and whether or not those with the most power are preparing for a future that the rest of the world has never contemplated.
Look Back
Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), has long been a director who seems to get the best out of his actors; it doesn’t matter whether those actors are 12 or 87, and his latest entry, A Look Back, is no different. Based on the famous Japanese web manga, Look Back is the story of two teenage girls — one confident, one shy — who are brought together by their shared love of manga and storytelling. The two small-town girls pursue their dreams, and over several years, we watch as their friendship blossoms and as tragedy and triumph strike their lives along the way. It’s not just a coming-of-age story, but one that looks at becoming who we are meant to be through the experiences that shape us. If it’s as good as the manga or animation that preceded it, Look Back feels like a quiet slice of life that we’re eager to serve and enjoy across multiple sittings.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong, the director of Burning, spent his last eight years relatively quiet after that film’s incredible reception at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, which introduced him to most international audiences and reintroduced Steven Yeun as the talented dramatic actor we know him to be today. A director with no formal film training, his latest film Possible Love is the story of two intertwined couples who cross paths while filming a documentary and, in doing so, find out interesting details about each other’s lives and aspects of themselves they’ve kept long secret.
Let’s be honest, after Burning, we are set for anything that Lee Chang-dong is up to. The fact that the movie also stars some of the most intriguing actors working in South Korea under his incredible direction has us even more excited. South Korea just announced it will submit Possible Love for next year’s Oscars, so here’s to seeing if the film will make it in the Best International Feature category. Since 2020’s Parasite, which won both the international race and the coveted Best Picture, there’s been a drought for South Korea at the Oscars and not much else in the years prior to that.
Ink
Danny Boyle returns to Venice after many years with an explosive new film about a group of men who sought to rewrite the modern-day paper industry — and did. Ink is a biographical tale that takes a peek inside the early days of The Sun newspaper and the growing Rupert Murdoch empire as Jack O’Connell plays real-life editor Larry Lamb and Guy Pearce steps into the shoes of the Australian man, businessman, and newspaper magnate whose political views and business strategies have shaped the modern world.
Jupiter
Imagine you’re the newly elected French president, and you’re immediately called into an anti-nuclear bunker beneath Paris to deal with an impending international crisis. In another film that reflects our current political environment, Jupiter attempts to chronicle what that would be like. The inciting incident in Jupiter relates to the Russian-Ukrainian war and how tensions within it could escalate us to the point of nuclear disaster. Set in one room where humanity’s fate is at stake, Jupiter feels like last year’s Venice International Film Festival entry A House of Dynamite, but it may dig deeper into the interpersonal relationships that will likely decide how we proceed in real-life international conflicts.
Hombre al Agua
Gael García Bernal is no stranger to the director’s chair, having first stepped behind the camera back in 2007, shortly after he rose to prominence starring with his longtime friend and collaborator, Diego Luna, in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También. Hombre al Agua is his latest directorial effort following his trip to Cannes in 2019 with Déficit. In Hombre al Agua, García Bernal plays a Colombian lifeguard who saves a wealthy Mexican businessman from drowning and, in thanks, the businessman brings him to Mexico, where he marries his daughter and they have a child. What was seen as a moment of coincidence unravels his entire world when he discovers that this new life might have been part of a grand scheme, and now he must try to figure out a way to take back control of his life — or stay trapped in a game of chess in which only his adversaries know the moves.
Wild Horse Nine
Martin McDonagh, in our minds, has not made a film that we can’t spend hours talking about, and his latest two-hander Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell and set in 1973 shortly before the Chilean coup, looks to be no different. To put it plainly, give us McDonagh, two incredible actors, and whip-smart dialogue, and we are set.
Early whispers say the dialogue is as crisp and fresh as a newly ironed shirt and that the film might be McDonagh’s best, and the cinematography by Ben Davis is just about buzzing with anticipation. A lot of names are currently being bandied about in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. Still, Rockwell and Malkovich might be the late addition to crash those hopes with a pitch-perfect screenplay and performances that look to be instantly iconic, like McDonagh’s previous works (In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin, Seven Psychopaths).
Father Joe
Kiefer Sutherland and Al Pacino take a look inside the underbelly of Little Italy with Father Joe. Sutherland, who plays Father Joe, a man of the cloth that we’ve never seen before, is engaged in a secret war with the criminal underworld. He pleads his life both on and off the dais, trying to dismantle the crime rings that have turned his city into a war zone. Father Joe is a quiet figure who’s loyal to his parish, but he’s also lethal in his efforts to weed out mob bosses and inspire the faithful to fight back, going toe-to-toe with formidable men like the mob boss played by Pacino. Father Joe is an interesting anti-hero story as we follow a man pledged to protect the meek and innocent while being caught up in a real-life episode of The Sopranos.
The Venice International Film Festival runs from September 2 to September 15.
