Venice Film Festival Competition Pits 16 International Films Against Five Italian Entries

Sixteen international films will face five Italian entries in competition at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival, with a shared concern running through the selection: how cinema can capture a present marked by conflict, fear and change.

The lineup brings together established directors including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Martin McDonagh, Danny Boyle and Florian Zeller. Alberto Barbera identified the urgency to observe a fractured world as the thread connecting the otherwise varied filmmakers.

Danny Boyle’s “INK,” starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, will open the festival. Adapted from a play by James Graham, it follows Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 acquisition of the British newspaper The Sun and its aggressive transformation into a publishing phenomenon that changed the United Kingdom’s media landscape and reached beyond it.

Lee Chang-dong’s “POSSIBLE LOVE,” produced by Netflix Korea and inspired by a chapter of Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” follows two married couples whose lives become intertwined when a documentary filmmaker decides to film both households. The film has been selected for the 2027 Oscars.

Other entries include Herzog’s “BUCKING FASTARD,” inspired by the story of twins Freda and Greta Chaplin; Lance Oppenheim’s “PRIMETIME,” with Robert Pattinson playing journalist Chris Hansen before “To Catch a Predator”; and Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s “DAU,” about Soviet scientist Lev Landau and his reluctant contribution to the first Soviet atomic bomb, detonated in 1949. The selection also includes “A PLACE TO HEAL,” “WILD HORSE NINE” and Nicolas Pariser’s “UN PEU AVANT MINUIT.”