The Croisette has barely had time to clear its chairs. Cannes 2026 is done, and as ever in May, attention slides eastward to the Lido: to Alberto Barbera’s programme for the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. This year it’s running 2–12 September, with Maggie Gyllenhaal presiding over the jury. Barbera, whose mandate now stretches to 2028, remains the most consequential individual in international festival programming, and there are no signs his appetite for attention-grabbing cinema is cooling.
What follows is not a predictions list in the strict sense. It is thirty films we’d very much like to see on the Lido this September, ranked roughly by likelihood. Some are already widely tipped. Others are simply crossed fingers. A handful may not be finished in time, and at least one is a fool’s dream we keep making anyway. But all of them are the kind of cinema Venice loves to champion. If Barbera lands even half of these, I predict this will be a Venice for the ages.
1. Wild Horse Nine
Dir. Martin McDonagh
John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play CIA agents despatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, in McDonagh’s follow-up to The Banshees of Inisherin, with Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, and Parker Posey completing the ensemble. McDonagh’s relationship with Venice is by now a matter of muscle memory: both Banshees and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri opened the festival in competition, and Deadline has been unequivocal that the Lido is once again the most logical home.
2. After
Dir. Lars von Trier
Von Trier’s first feature since The House That Jack Built is reportedly complete, and likely his last: a meditation on death and the afterlife, composed almost entirely from still photographs in the manner of Marker’s La Jetée, made while its director manages a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Cannes passed despite widespread expectation it would be selected, which means Venice has next refusal. Barbera, who programmed Nymphomaniac in 2014, is not a man to let a dying master’s final film slip through his hands.
3. The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Dir. David Fincher
Brad Pitt reprises his Oscar-winning role from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in a $200 million Netflix production written by Quentin Tarantino, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Elizabeth Debicki, and Carla Gugino in support. Fincher brought The Killer to Venice in 2023, and the festival rumour mill has been pointing toward a Lido return for months.
4. Bucking Fastard
Dir. Werner Herzog
Kate and Rooney Mara play twin sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who, in search of an imaginary land where true love is possible, begin digging a tunnel through a mountain range. It is exactly the kind of premise that has Herzog’s name written through it. Cannes invited the film as an official selection but Herzog declined when it wasn’t offered a competition slot, a decision Variety confirmed in early May; with Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson supporting in a film partly shot in Dublin, and the recent precedent of Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother going from a similar Cannes snub to the Golden Lion at Venice 2025, the Lido is the obvious next stop.
5. The Basics of Philosophy
Dir. Paul Schrader
The fourth entry in Schrader’s “man in a room” series (following First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener) concerns a repressed philosophy professor (Jack Huston) whose father’s death sends him careening into a guilt-ridden past, shot by Sean Price Williams with Sofia Boutella, Bill Pullman, and Daniel Zovatto in support. Screen Daily has the film among the year’s Venice contenders, and the production lineage points directly back to the Lido: the same producer team behind The Card Counter, which premiered at Venice in 2021.
6. Circles
Dir. Michel Franco
Shot in black and white, this Hebrew-language film follows Meir Har Zion and his sister Shoshana, the celebrated, contested siblings at the heart of early Israeli military history, set during the formative years of the state in the early 1950s, co-written with Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval. Franco has now premiered three consecutive films at Venice, with New Order, Sundown, and Memory all going to the Lido between 2020 and 2023, making him arguably the festival’s most reliable contemporary regular. For better or worse, Venice loves Franco, making Circles a near shoo-in.
7. A Good Little Soldier
Dir. Stéphane Brizé
Alba Rohrwacher plays Carla, an HR executive newly arrived at a major insurance corporation and tasked with rebuilding the company’s employer brand. The territory sits squarely within Brizé’s long-running interest in the financialisation of working life and the moral costs it exacts, with longtime collaborator Vincent Lindon again in support. Screen Daily has it in its Venice running, which would make this Brizé’s fourth Lido entry in five years following Une Vie, Un Autre Monde, and Hors-saison. At this point he is more or less in residence.
8. 15/18
Dir. Cédric Kahn
A drama set inside the paediatric psychiatric ward of a public hospital, where every patient is aged 15 to 18. The arrival of a mysterious new admission named Enzo threatens to unsettle an already overstretched community of teenagers. Screen Daily has it among the festival’s contenders (under the international title A Place To Heal), where it would mark Kahn’s return to the festival that programmed L’Ennui back in 1998. Kahn has been to Cannes and Berlin in the years since, but this time it looks like a Venice homecoming.
9. Possible Love
Dir. Lee Chang-dong
Plot details on Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) remain scarce, but Netflix has confirmed a Q4 release, which puts a fall festival premiere squarely in play. Cannes has been ruled out, and Barbera, who has a long track record of bringing the major Asian auteurs to the Lido, will have been working the phones since this became available. And for the last few years Netflix and Venice have gone together like Aperol and Prosecco.
10. Switzerland
Dir. Anton Corbijn
Helen Mirren plays Patricia Highsmith in self-imposed retirement in the Swiss Alps, her solitude shattered when a young literary agent (Alden Ehrenreich) turns up with orders from her publisher to extract one final Ripley novel. As the two begin to collaborate, the lines between Highsmith’s invented world and the real one start to dissolve in increasingly unsettling ways. Corbijn’s first feature in a decade, shot by Robbie Ryan and edited by Andrew Hulme (who cut Control), with a world premiere planned for the autumn. The American premiered in Venice competition in 2010, which makes the Lido familiar ground.
11. Trick
Dir. Mario Martone
Toni Servillo plays Daniele Mallarico, a celebrated illustrator who has lived in near solitude for years, in a chamber piece adapted from Domenico Starnone’s novel about the strange duel that erupts between him and his small, fiercely imaginative grandson over the course of a few days inside a Naples apartment. Martone’s fifteenth feature began principal photography this March, with Rai Cinema International selling at the Cannes market specifically positioning it for Venice; Variety’s reporting from the market explicitly tipped the Lido as the destination, where Martone’s The King of Laughter premiered in 2021.
12. The Echo Chamber
Dir. Andrea Pallaoro
Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli, and Susan Sarandon lead Pallaoro’s love story, the precise contours of which have yet to be unveiled. The director has now competed at Venice twice running (Hannah, which won Charlotte Rampling Best Actress in 2017, and Monica in 2022), and Screen Daily has the film among this year’s Italian Venice contenders, which makes the Lido the obvious destination.
13. Digger
Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu
Tom Cruise stars alongside Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, and Riz Ahmed in what Iñárritu has described as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions,” reportedly centred on a man of almost cosmic power and influence, with a 2 October release date. On paper this should be one of the year’s certainties, given that Iñárritu’s Lido history runs from 21 Grams through Birdman to Bardo. Deadline has reported, from multiple well-placed sources, that a fall festival premiere is unlikely to be on the cards, and that hesitation should give anyone pause about a film of this profile. Still…things change.
14. Harmonia
Dir. Guy Nattiv
Carrie Coon plays Rita Cooper, a woman who renounces her family in 1980s America to join the Harmonia commune, entranced by its charismatic leader; her daughters, played by Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young, travel to bring her back and find themselves drawn into the group’s orbit. Nattiv has described the film as his most personal work, rooted in his own grandmother’s involvement in a real cult, with Lily James completing the central cast after Vicky Krieps departed the project. Screen Daily lists it among the Venice contenders rather than its stronger bets, and Nattiv’s festival track record is modest at this level, but a cast of this quality and subject matter with genuine personal urgency can travel a long way.
15. Cry to Heaven
Dir. Tom Ford
Ford’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven is set in the baroque world of 18th-century Italian opera, following a Venetian noble and a castrated singer from Calabria whose fates become catastrophically entwined. Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson lead a cast that also includes Adele (making her film debut), Colin Firth, Paul Bettany, George MacKay, Hunter Schafer, Thandiwe Newton, and Ciarán Hinds, shot by The Substance cinematographer Benjamin Kracun. The film wrapped a ten-week shoot in Rome in March 2026 and is explicitly targeting Venice, with Ford self-financing and no distribution partner yet announced, with the bidding planned to open after the premiere. A Silver Lion winner (Nocturnal Animals, 2016, I liked it so there) walking back to Barbera with a finished period epic is not a situation he will want to miss.
16. Behemoth!
Dir. Tony Gilroy
Pedro Pascal stars as a cellist at the centre of a nonlinear, music-driven drama that Searchlight Pictures has been developing with unusual structural complexity. Talk around a positive test screening in mid-May has the film increasingly visible in early Venice speculation, and Gilroy’s Michael Clayton did indeed debut on the Lido in 2007. Bring your bag of baguettes.
17. The Statement
Dir. Tom McCarthy
A dark comedy adapted from Nathaniel Rich’s book Losing Earth, set at a Florida beach resort in 1980 where a group of scientists, activists, and policymakers gather to produce a definitive statement on climate change. Easier, as it turns out, than it sounds. Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Amy Ryan, and Tatiana Maslany lead the ensemble, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, and McCarthy has form here: Spotlight screened on the Lido in 2015 before going on to win Best Picture. Screen Daily has already flagged this as one of the festival’s stronger bets. Could this be this year’s Conclave, except a comedy?
18. Mimesis
Dir. Kaouther Ben Hania
Set in 1990s Tunisia, Ben Hania’s follow-up to The Voice of Hind Rajab follows a woman’s effort to prevent a new imam from converting her family’s ancient mausoleum into a mosque, reuniting her with producer Nadim Cheikhrouha and DP Juan Sarmiento G. She took the Grand Jury Prize at Venice 2025, which makes the Lido the most natural home for a film that also missed Cannes.
19. After
Dir. Kirill Serebrennikov
The exiled Russian auteur’s first French-language feature, assembling a striking lineup of Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Ardant, Vincent Macaigne, Guillaume Gallienne, and Louis Garrel, with plot details closely guarded. Serebrennikov has been a Cannes regular through Petrov’s Flu, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, and Limonov, but with the Croisette behind us and Screen Daily listing the film among Venice contenders, the Lido looks like the natural destination. And yes, this is the second film on this list to be titled simply After, which is the kind of coincidence we are choosing to take as a sign. If both films make it, we look forward to people accidentally attending the wrong screening. O Fortuna!
20. It Will Happen Tonight
Dir. Nanni Moretti
Details of Moretti’s new film, which began shooting in September 2025, remain under wraps. Playtime was working it hard for Venice at this year’s Cannes market, which counts as encouraging; but there are also film community rumours of a possible 2027 delivery, so this one should be held loosely.
21. Wake of Umbra
Dir. Carlos Reygadas
Plot details for Reygadas’s new film are entirely undisclosed, and no sales agent has yet emerged, which is either characteristically Reygadas or a sign the film isn’t ready. His last feature, Our Time, premiered in Venice competition in 2018, and the Lido remains the most natural fit. The silence is starting to feel a touch loud, all the same.
22. Look Back
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
A live-action adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga (Fujimoto being the same author behind Chainsaw Man), following two schoolgirls whose shared passion for drawing brings them together before a terrible tragedy drives them apart, acquired for North America and the UK by GKids and sold internationally by Goodfellas. With Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box already premiering at Cannes to decidedly muted responses, Look Back is being held back as his second 2026 film, and THR has reported it is being positioned for a Venice launch.
23. No Pain
Dir. Gianni Amelio
A sleep phenomenon overtakes an entire town’s population. Two boy scouts remain the only ones awake in a world that has fallen asleep. Amelio’s new drama touches on the fantastique, and the Italian veteran’s relationship with Venice runs deep: Così ridevano took the Golden Lion in 1998, and his more recent work has been a regular fixture on the Lido. Screen Daily places it among the year’s Italian Venice contenders, alongside fellow countrymen Pallaoro, Martone, and Moretti.
24. Milo
Dir. Nicole Garcia
Marion Cotillard plays Alice, a woman fresh from prison who takes work at a café near a garage and slowly insinuates herself into the life of a young mechanic named Milo, played by Théodore Pellerin. Her reasons for being there are deeply personal: Milo is her son. Garcia has talked about the film in terms of sustained emotional containment, and with Laure Calamy among the supporting cast it has an unusually strong ensemble for this tier of French filmmaking. The director has competed twice at Venice (Place Vendôme in 1998 and Lovers in 2020), though StudioCanal’s planned French theatrical release introduces some scheduling friction with the festival calendar.
25. Chork
Dir. Shane Meadows
Meadows’s first feature in over a decade, the details of which have not yet been released. Anything from the director of This Is England and Dead Man’s Shoes is, by definition, an event for British cinema. Screen Daily speculates a continental premiere is being lined up, which would be unfamiliar territory for a filmmaker more usually associated with British festivals. But Meadows is overdue a major international platform, and the Lido would be a generous one.
26. The Way of the Wind
Dir. Terrence Malick
Malick’s biblical epic has been in post-production for seven years and reportedly exists somewhere as a lengthy rough cut, having been linked to every major festival since 2022. A 2027 slip is the safe call. But the Lido remains the most plausible landing spot if the film actually arrives this year. That same sentence has been written about Malick before, and will probably be written about him again.
27. Tender Loving Care
Dir. Mike Leigh
Leigh’s new film missed Cannes and has Bleecker Street distributing in the US. Leigh’s premieres have moved across Cannes, Venice, and TIFF without obvious pattern over the years, so the Lido is as plausible a home as any. A new Mike Leigh in competition is the sort of thing Venice would happily clear the calendar for. Screen Daily has it among the festival’s stronger bets.
28. A Long Winter
Dir. Andrew Haigh
Haigh’s follow-up to All of Us Strangers is confirmed in post-production, missed Cannes, and remains largely under wraps in terms of both cast and story. Haigh has consistently gone to TIFF (Weekend, 45 Years, All of Us Strangers), which makes Venice the slightly less likely home, but a film this keenly anticipated will be in play whichever festival ultimately lands it.
29. Let Love In
Dir. Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch
A MUBI-backed piece of autofiction about a couple trying to navigate the aftermath of an affair, co-written and co-directed by van Groeningen and Vandermeersch and drawing openly on their own lives, with Luca Marinelli co-starring. Their previous collaboration The Eight Mountains won the Jury Prize at Cannes 2022, establishing them as filmmakers every major festival wants; Let Love In missed this year’s Croisette, and MUBI’s arthouse instincts generally point toward an autumn premiere. Venice would be the most generous platform for it.
30. Bunker
Dir. Florian Zeller
Plot details are being kept tightly under wraps, but Zeller’s casting of real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz is one of the more intriguing combinations currently circling the fall festivals. The Son premiered in Venice competition in 2022, giving Zeller direct Lido history, and Screen Daily has the film in its Venice contenders. Bardem and Cruz together in the Zellerverse is hard to resist.
Thirty films, only some of which will actually make the Lido. Venice’s main competition holds around twenty titles, with further slots in Orizzonti and the various sidebars, so realistically a fair few of these will end up at TIFF, others at NYFF, and one or two will simply slip into 2027. But with Herzog, Schrader, Brizé, and Kahn all widely tipped for competition, and von Trier’s rejected-from-Cannes final film almost certainly heading to the Lido, the contours of an unusually rich September are already taking shape. Programme announcements typically begin in late July. We’ll be listening in.
What’s that? You want a 31st movie? A wild card? Ok. Let’s go with… Dune 3.
Ciao!