Why the Whole World Still Coming to Venice: The most glamorous crossroads opens its 83rd edition

There are film festivals, and then there is Venice. Perhaps it is the geography that preserves the distinction. In Cannes, cinema takes over the Croisette; in Toronto, it occupies a city. In Venice, it arrives by water. Filmmakers, actors, critics and producers step from boats onto the Lido, and for eleven days an island better known for beaches and Belle Époque hotels becomes one of the places where the future of international cinema is negotiated. The glamour is unmistakable, but it would be a mistake to confuse Venice’s beauty with frivolity. The 83rd Venice International Film Festival, opening September 2 and running through September 12, remains important because it brings art, commerce, celebrity, experimentation and cultural exchange into unusually close proximity. La Biennale itself defines the festival’s purpose as promoting international cinema “in a spirit of freedom and dialogue,” treating film simultaneously as art, entertainment and industry.

This year Venice opens with a film that seems almost designed to provoke conversation. Danny Boyle’s Ink will receive its world premiere in competition on September 2 in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema. Written by acclaimed British playwright and screenwriter James Graham, the film stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy and revisits the turbulent transformation of Britain’s newspaper business surrounding Rupert Murdoch and The Sun. La Biennale describes it as a story about a group determined to create a new kind of news that gives people what they want; and, in doing so, changes the world around them. For a festival opening in 2026, when questions about media power, public trust, technology and who controls information have become impossible to separate from contemporary life, the choice feels particularly sharp.

Boyle’s film is only one entry in a competition deliberately built around contrast. The Venezia 83 selection brings together films from established filmmakers and less predictable voices, all competing for the Golden Lion, Venice’s highest prize. Presiding over the jury is American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, joined by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, English composer and artist Daniel Blumberg, Italian film scholar Francesco Casetti, French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli, Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat and Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To. Even before they judge a single film, the jury makes a statement about what Venice still aspires to be: not one national cinema evaluating another, but radically different cinematic traditions sitting at the same table.

That internationalism is not decorative. Venice’s main competition accepts feature films as world premieres, which gives the festival an unusual ability to introduce work before critical opinion has hardened around it. A film can arrive on the Lido with little more than anticipation and leave days later carrying reviews, awards momentum and an international reputation. But the official competition is only the most visible layer. Orizzonti looks toward new aesthetic and expressive directions, paying particular attention to debut filmmakers, emerging talent, independent work and lesser-known cinemas. Venice Spotlight emphasizes innovation and originality in the relationship between films and their audiences. Venice Classics turns in the opposite direction, toward cinema’s memory, presenting newly restored works from film archives and institutions around the world. In 2026, that section includes 19 restorations, with films by Luis Buñuel, John Cassavetes, Ann Hui, Ernst Lubitsch, Roberto Rossellini, Andrzej Wajda and others.

Then there is the part of Venice that looks beyond cinema as we have traditionally understood it. Venice Immersive, now marking its tenth anniversary, takes place not on the Lido itself but on nearby Lazzaretto Vecchio, reached by a short waterbus journey. This year it presents 68 projects from 26 countries, including 30 in competition, spanning virtual and mixed reality, immersive video, installations and virtual worlds. Venice was the first major A-list film festival to establish an official competition devoted to extended reality, and its continued investment in the field says something important about the institution: the same festival that carefully restores cinema’s past is willing to question what a cinematic experience might become next.

That coexistence of preservation and experimentation may be Venice’s greatest strength. A restored Cassavetes film and an XR experience can belong to the same festival. So can an Afghan filmmaker and a Hollywood star, a French auteur and a first-time director. The red carpet photographs inevitably travel fastest around the world, but underneath them is a complicated cultural marketplace in which critics encounter unfamiliar filmmakers, distributors discover films, national cinemas gain visibility and artists test their work before an intensely international audience. Venice is glamorous, certainly. It is also working.

Its history helps explain the authority it still commands. Founded in 1932 as part of La Biennale di Venezia, the Venice International Film Festival is the world’s oldest international film festival. That longevity alone would make it important; what matters more is its ability to avoid becoming merely ceremonial. Venice has continually expanded the definition of what belongs at a major film festival, while preserving a serious commitment to cinema history. Its 2026 regulations explicitly include works created with the contribution of artificial intelligence within its broad conception of contemporary cinema, even as Venice Classics works to ensure that younger audiences encounter restored films from earlier generations. The festival is therefore doing two seemingly contradictory things at once: protecting cinema’s memory while testing its boundaries.

For American audiences, there is another reason to pay attention. Venice has become an important early stop on the road toward the North American fall film season and awards conversation, but following it merely as a predictor of trophies misses the larger point. The films that emerge from Venice often bring with them subjects that will occupy cultural conversation long after the gondolas and evening gowns disappear from the photographs. This year’s opening film alone raises questions about journalism, power and popular appetite. Elsewhere across the program, filmmakers from multiple continents arrive with stories shaped by very different political systems, histories and social experiences. What Venice offers is an early map; not necessarily of which films will win, but of what filmmakers around the world believe is worth talking about now.

French audiences have equally compelling reasons to watch. France remains deeply embedded in the festival’s international ecosystem, from filmmakers and performers to co-productions and jury representation. Xavier Giannoli sits on this year’s main jury, while French cinema and French-linked productions appear across the program. Venice is one of those increasingly rare cultural spaces where “national cinema” remains meaningful but insufficient: a film may be French, American, Iranian or Italian while its financing, cast, audience and eventual cultural life cross several borders. That makes the festival an unusually clear portrait of how culture actually moves in the 21st century.

And that, ultimately, is why the world still comes to Venice. Not because celebrities look particularly good arriving by boat, although they certainly do, and not simply because the Golden Lion can transform a film’s fortunes. The festival survives because it has understood something essential about cinema: films become culturally important through conversation. They need audiences to encounter them, critics to argue about them, distributors to carry them elsewhere, filmmakers to challenge one another and institutions willing to preserve what came before while making room for what comes next.

For eleven days in September, Venice manages to place all of those forces on a narrow strip of land between the Adriatic and the lagoon. The restored masterpiece, the experimental virtual world, the unknown filmmaker and the international star temporarily share the same address.

The boats are part of the magic. The red carpet is part of the theatre. But the real reason to watch Venice is what happens after everyone arrives: for a brief moment, much of the film world looks in the same direction, and begins arguing about what cinema should become next.

Sources:

La Biennale di Venezia — 83rd Venice International Film Festival, official information and 2026 program. La Biennale di Venezia — Ink, opening film of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. La Biennale di Venezia — International Jury of the Venezia 83 Competition.

La Biennale di Venezia — Venice Classics 2026. La Biennale di Venezia — Venice Immersive 2026 and 10th-anniversary program.

La Biennale di Venezia — Official Regulations of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.