Sure, the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival had its fair share of high-profile releases which fizzled (the Marilyn Monroe-centric , Werner Herzog’s bonkers , Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem’s ), but there were plenty more which had staying power – gripping dramas, twisty thrillers and supremely powerful documentaries which have leapt straight from the Lido and into the 2027 awards race. These are the eight films you need to see.
Walking a taut tightrope between hilarious and deeply melancholy, Martin McDonagh’s latest romp combines a sharp script with the extraordinary, other-worldly landscapes of Chile’s Easter Island, birthing a madcap thriller which winks at our chaotic political present. A deadpan John Malkovich steals the show as Chris, a CIA veteran reaching the end of his life and contemplating his complicated, blood-soaked past. When he’s dispatched from Santiago to that mystical, volcanic speck in the Pacific Ocean, along with his irritable friend and colleague, Lee (Sam Rockwell), a bizarre tangle of shoot-outs, car chases and undercover operations offer a glimpse of the mindless violence which will soon follow with the horrific Chilean coup of 1973. A chatty, thoughtful film with big ideas about American imperialism and our seemingly endless battle against fascism, which also happens to be a rollicking good time.
A 22-minute short film which somehow manages to pack a gigantic punch, this nerve-shredding account of ICE’s reign of terror across Minneapolis at the very start of this year is an urgent and compulsory watch. Co-directed by Golden Lion-winning documentarian Laura Poitras and fearless local filmmaker Rachel Lauren Mueller, it provides shockingly restrained tableaux which hint at the full scale of what happened and is continuing to happen across the US: masked men turning city centres into war zones, petrified immigrants commuting to work in the boots of cars, shackled detainees being loaded onto planes, maps swimming with pins outlining mysterious abductions. The effect is bone-chilling, but also one which invites action rather than paralysis – against all odds, when the ordinary people of this city rallied together to protest, support each other and disrupt the heavy policing of their communities, the result was a significant scaling back of the government’s operations. Galvanising, life-affirming and profoundly cinematic, despite being a sliver of a documentary.
The birth of tabloid culture as we know it today began in 1969, when Rupert Murdoch (here played by a tetchy Guy Pearce) purchased the then-flailing newspaper and gave it a spunky, boundary-pushing makeover – think, fewer deep dives into global politics, and more juicy scandals and page three pin-ups. At the helm of this shift was editor Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell), a straight-laced newspaper man who sells his soul for a big paycheque and opens a can of worms, setting the nation on a path from which it can never return. Under the zippy, breathless direction of Danny Boyle, and with the valuable addition of Claire Foy (as the paper’s no-nonsense women’s editor, a fictional amalgamation of several Fleet Street pioneers), this true-life tale is as thrilling as it is unsettling – a paean to the cigarette-fuelled, typewriter-filled glory days of mid-century journalism, and a warning about the slippery slope from peddling egalitarian entertainment to the masses to relinquishing all of your morals in pursuit of a bigger bottom line.
Korean maestro Lee Chang-dong returns to the big screen eight years after his smouldering, disturbing, Oscar-nominated with another knotty study of desire, jealousy and class differences. At its centre is a formidable turn from Jeon Do-yeon (a Cannes Best Actress winner for the auteur’s 2007 hit ), as Mi-ok, a dissatisfied wife and mother, whose husband, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), is still reeling from a devastating job loss. Enter: ’s Cho Yeo-jeong as Ye-ji, a stylish and wealthy documentary filmmaker, in the midst of a project about the effects of workforce shrinkages and corporate restructuring. In a bid to feature Ho-seok’s story, Ye-ji draws Mi-ok into a strange and intimate friendship involving dinners with her hedge funder husband (Zo In-sung), a trip to their beachside compound and a series of interviews through which the director delicately unfolds her subject, peering into her most private recesses. A fascinating slow-burn, it’s another masterful outing from one of the greats of world cinema.
There’s a certain messiness to Lance Oppenheim’s narrative feature debut, a pacy, mid-2000s fable recounting the rise of To Catch a Predator from modest hit to cultural phenomenon. But, thanks to a transformative, stilted, electric performance from Robert Pattinson – as Chris Hansen, the show’s unsparing host – it’s one hell of a ride; a stomach-turning look at the wild, unregulated early days of reality TV, and the frenetic race for ratings no matter the human cost. Much like the series it’s centred on, it’s both deeply troubling and impossible to look away from.
May El-Toukhy’s unintentionally found itself at the centre of a heated debate ahead of the festival, as the only film premiering in competition from a female director. (The last-minute addition of the documentary which was co-directed by a woman, did little to quell the conversation.) The dearth of women filmmakers in this year’s line-up, however, didn’t stop El-Toukhy’s historical drama from standing on its own terms. Set in Denmark in the aftermath of World War II, it follows Marie (a knockout performance from Mathilde Arcel that swings between desperate restraint and searing intensity), a working-class nanny and housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy, widowed employer – and, in doing so, springboard up the social ladder. Until, that is, dark secrets from her past are revealed: secrets that are hinted at through a harrowing scene of a “horizontal collaborator”, or a woman who was sexually involved with a Nazi soldier, being beaten, shaved and painted with a swastika in the street. It’s a deeply atmospheric, sensitively acted window into an overlooked moment in history, with El-Toukhy painting a vivid picture of the female body as its own kind of battlefield. –
You’d be forgiven for not wanting to sit through four hours of Elon Musk’s rantings and ravings, given it already feels like we’ve been trapped in an elevator with him for the past five years. But the Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s ambitious, sprawling study of the billionaire’s rocketing rise and rise, charting with a forensic eye for detail how a bookish South African teen became a Silicon Valley kingpin and, more recently, a culture war firebrand wielding a terrifying amount of influence over the worlds of technology and global politics. Talking heads include everyone from Musk’s own father to a handful of the women he’s spurned in his quest to birth “a legion of children” – and while you might be familiar with much of the material already, assembling it all in one place makes for an illuminating and ultimately damning watch. Bonus points for the playful new song by David Byrne that plays over the credits, reworking past statements from Musk into a punchy portrait of him as a snake oil salesman. –
may have been a last-minute addition to this year’s competition line-up, but it was still one of the festival’s most probing, powerful films. Directed by a pair of Israeli filmmakers from the team behind 2024’s Oscar-winning and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer, this newspaper-backed documentary features anonymous interviews with 24 members of the Israeli Intelligence Corps – largely staged on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night, with their appearances and voices digitally altered – outlining the IDF’s cold, careless approach to civilian deaths in Gaza, through AI-assisted massacres and deliberately bombing targets in buildings full of families. (On a particularly chilling note, very few of them seem to express any sense of regret or remorse.) Some might question whether the film is more a feat of journalism than a feat of filmmaking, but the eerie calm with which it bears witness to their words – and the clever, nuanced use of archival footage – make feel like a genuine cinematic achievement.