74th Venice Film Festival Embraces Genre Cinema and Virtual Reality

festival-fair · 2026-05-04

The 74th Venice International Film Festival, running from August 30 to September 9 at the Lido di Venezia, focuses on genre films under the direction of Alberto Barbera and Paolo Baratta. The festival presents a mix of auteur and commercial cinema, with numerous Italian titles across all sections and many works from the Middle East. A new competition for virtual reality debuts, featuring 31 selected works, 22 in competition. Barbera notes VR 'will not be the future of cinema, it will be something else.' The festival's visual identity changes, featuring a silhouette from 'Singin' in the Rain' on a blue background. The program lacks a single guiding line but includes recurring themes of immigration and documentary. Netflix returns after Cannes controversies with 'Suburra – La serie,' 'Our Souls At Night' starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford (who receives a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement), and 'Wormwood.' Four Italian films compete: 'Ammore e malavita' by Manetti Bros., 'Hannah' with Charlotte Rampling, 'Una famiglia' with Micaela Ramazzotti, and 'The Leisure Seeker' with Helen Mirren. Other highlights include Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow,' Darren Aronofsky's 'Mother!,' Guillermo del Toro's 'The Shape of Water,' and Hirokazu Koreeda's 'The Third Murder.'

Key facts

74th Venice International Film Festival runs August 30 to September 9 at Lido di Venezia
Directed by Alberto Barbera and Paolo Baratta
New virtual reality competition with 31 works, 22 in competition
Visual features silhouette from 'Singin' in the Rain'
Netflix presents 'Suburra – La serie,' 'Our Souls At Night,' and 'Wormwood'
Robert Redford receives Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
Four Italian films in competition: 'Ammore e malavita,' 'Hannah,' 'Una famiglia,' 'The Leisure Seeker'
Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow' on migration crisis screens

Entities

Artists

Alberto Barbera
Paolo Baratta
Emma Stone
Manetti Bros.
Andrea Pallaoro
Charlotte Rampling
Sebastiano Riso
Micaela Ramazzotti
Paolo Virzì
Helen Mirren
Susanna Nicchiarelli
Cosimo Gomez
Claudio Santamaria
Marco D'Amore
Sara Serraiocco
Ivan Cappiello
Marino Guarnieri
Alessandro Rak
Dario Sansone
Stefano Consiglio
Giuseppe Bertolucci
Selma Jean Dell'Olio
Marco Ferreri
Mario Sesti
Paolo Villaggio
Ai Weiwei
Darren Aronofsky
Jennifer Lawrence
Javier Bardem
Guillermo del Toro
Hirokazu Koreeda
Damien Manivel
Stephen Frears
Judi Dench
Ali Fazal
Eddie Izzard
Penelope Cruz
Adriano Giannini
Valeria Golino
Abel Ferrara
William Friedkin
Jane Fonda
Robert Redford
Ritesh Batra
Kent Haruf
Errol Morris
Peter Sarsgaard
Molly Parker
Margherita Bordino
Pietro Marcello
Franco Maresco
Mario Martone
Luca Marinelli
Letizia Battaglia
Ciccio Mira
Francesco Di Leva
Massimiliano Gallo
Roberto De Francesco
Eduardo De Filippo
James Gray
Brad Pitt
Tommy Lee Jones
Ruth Negga
Liv Tyler
Todd Phillips
Joaquin Phoenix
Robert De Niro
Roman Polanski
Pablo Larraín
Gael García Bernal
Steven Soderbergh
Meryl Streep
Gary Oldman
Lorenzo Mattotti
Chiara Ferragni
Elisa Amoruso
Haifa Al-Mansour
Stefano Sollima
Paolo Sorrentino
Lucrecia Martel
Alex Gibney
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Louis Garrel
Jean Dujardin
Emmanuelle Seigner
Noah Baumbach
Scarlett Johansson
Adam Driver
Laura Dern
Alan Alda
Ray Liotta
Antonio Banderas
Jeffrey Wright
Matthias Schoenarts
David Michod
Timothée Chalamet
Joel Edgerton
Sean Harris
Ben Mendelsohn
Robert Pattinson
Lily-Rose Depp
Elio Germano
Chiara Lagani

Institutions

Venice International Film Festival
La Biennale di Venezia
Netflix
Artribune
Venice Film Festival
Mostra del Cinema di Venezia
Festival de Cannes
Toronto Film Festival
Sky
Cattleya
Wildside
Giornate degli Autori
Riccione Teatro

Locations

Venice
Italy
Lido di Venezia
Cannes
France
Middle East
Lido
United States
Saudi Arabia
Lazzaretto Vecchio
Riccione
Panama City

Sources

Artribune — 2017-07-28
Artribune — 2019-07-25
Artribune — 2019-08-26