Venice opens with Boyle's Murdoch film and a lifetime Lion for Clooney

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival opened on the Lido on 2 September with two set pieces that the organisers wanted in the same evening. George Clooney, 65, received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at 7 p.m. local time, with Laura Dern giving the tribute. Danny Boyle's Ink then launched the official competition.

Ink is an adaptation of James Graham's play about Rupert Murdoch's 1969 purchase of The Sun and the partnership with editor Larry Lamb that turned the paper into a tabloid engine. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch. Jack O'Connell plays Lamb. Claire Foy is also in the cast. All three were expected on the Palazzo del Cinema carpet. Netflix has the US and Latin American rights.

Artistic director Alberto Barbera said Clooney still suffers from his own image as a handsome lead, and that the Lion was a way to mark him as an actor and director first. The two men last overlapped in Venice on Jay Kelly. Ellen Burstyn, 93, will receive a second lifetime Lion later in the run.

Twenty-one films and a thinner studio presence

Twenty-one titles compete for the Golden Lion. The festival closes on 12 September with Giovanni Veronesi's Italian costume drama Dio ride (God Laughs). Among the films drawing buyers and awards scouts are Lance Oppenheim's Primetime, with Robert Pattinson as Dateline NBC correspondent Chris Hansen; Martin McDonagh's CIA comedy Wild Horse Nine; a four-hour Elon Musk documentary titled Musk; and Steven Knight's Oasis film Don't Look Back in Anger, due in theatres on 11 September. Liam and Noel Gallagher are expected on the Lido.

Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, John Malkovich and Rooney Mara are also on the guest list. Barbera and several correspondents noted that Hollywood studios sent fewer films than in recent years. Production costs and a cautious awards calendar thinned the American slate, as they did at Cannes earlier in 2026.

The political lineup

Barbera has called this edition the most political in recent memory. The selection includes Naza, from two of the filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land; My Undesirable Friends — Part II: Exile, about independent Russian journalists covering Ukraine; Palestinian features; and a short on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis. Climate and shrinking political space appear across several other titles.

Those choices arrived already in argument. Protest and counter-protest have followed Gaza-related films at other European festivals this summer. Venice is trying to hold a red carpet and a geopolitical argument on the same island for 11 days. Whether that mix helps or hurts the films will be visible in the reviews that leave the Lido before the weekend.

The oldest festival in the world still sets an early marker for the autumn awards season. Ink is the first test. A film about a newspaper proprietor, opening in a year when governments and platforms are fighting over speech, will not be watched as a period piece. That is why Boyle got the first night.