PARIS, Sept 1 — The Venice Film Festival kicks off Wednesday with few Hollywood productions but plenty of indie gems, heavy-hitting documentaries and A-listers.

AFP picks the films, the issues and the personalities that are likely to attract the most attention during one of the world’s most glamourous film events, which runs until September 12.

Murdoch biopic 

The festival and main competition starts with a promising opener by British Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle who is premiering his latest movie Ink about right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Australia-born Murdoch, the 95-year-old Fox News owner, has been the subject of several new biographies recently and a dramatisation of his family’s internal battles in hit HBO series Succession.

Boyle focuses on his arrival in the UK media industry in 1969 when he purchased The Sun tabloid.

‘Musk’ 

Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney, whose previous films chronicled US military abuse and corruption, has turned his attention to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

“Hit piece for sure. Gibney is incapable of anything else,” the billionaire wrote on X last month of the nearly four-hour film titled Musk.

Robert Pattinson 

Robert Pattinson will be one of the biggest names on the Venice Lido this year, with the Batman and The Odyssey star appearing in Primetime by Lance Oppenheim.

It is based on the real-life story of American TV show To Catch a Predator that sought to expose paedophiles, with Pattinson set to play presenter Chris Hansen.

Hollywood favourite George Clooney will also add some stardust when he picks up a lifetime achievement Golden Lion award alongside Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist, Interstellar).

Studios and streamers 

American industry behemoths — the Hollywood studios and streamers Netflix and Amazon — turned up en masse in Venice in 2025 with a slate of pretty underwhelming movies.

They are skipping this year’s edition, extending a trend seen at Europe’s other two biggest film events in 2026, the Berlin and Cannes festivals, where they also shunned organisers.

Indie and arthouse 

Hollywood’s absence will leave more attention and eyeballs for some of the strong independently produced movies on offer.

These include Wild Horse Nine, a dark comedy by Ireland’s Martin McDonagh starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, Company by Casey Affleck, as well as Bucking Fastard by German veteran Werner Herzog, featuring sisters Kate Mara and Rooney Mara.

Two of Asia’s acclaimed filmmakers, Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda and South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, are also in the main competition with their latest Look Back and Possible Love.

Manchester’s finest 

The oft-feuding Oasis rock’n’roll brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher are set to light up the Lido to promote a documentary about their sold-out comeback tour last year.

Don’t Look Back in Anger promises a behind-the-scenes look at the Oasis mania sparked by the reunion, produced by Steven Knight, the creator of the Peaky Blinders series.

Palestine 

A new documentary called NAZA from two of the directors of Oscar-winning Israeli-Palestinian production No Other Land is one of several films in Venice about Israel’s war in Gaza.

Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor explore Israel’s AI-assisted targeting systems in Gaza where an estimated 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since 2023, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Other documentaries on the conflict include Citizen Osama about a photojournalist in Gaza, while Road to Jericho by Israeli director Amos Gitai documents Jewish extremist settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Men’s club 

Venice supremo Alberto Barbera prompted a backlash by selecting just one film by a woman director in the initial 20-strong main competition announced in July — the appropriately titled Woman Unknown by May El-Toukhy.

The quality of submissions from women directors “was not enough to put them into the competition,” he argued — which led to an open letter from campaign and industry groups.

The late addition of NAZA improved the gender balanced very slightly — it is co-directed by a woman.

Spanish power couple 

For fans of Spain’s power couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, French director Florian Zeller’s latest movie Bunker is a must-see.

The real-life couple, who got together on the set of Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008, play partners in a faltering marriage whose relationship is tested by a lucrative professional project for a billionaire played by Paul Dano. — AFP