The world’s oldest film festival opened its doors this week to a lineup that feels less like escapism and more like a mirror held up to political unrest, shifting democracies, and the fragility of freedom.
Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin set the tone on Sunday, confronting audiences with an unflinching portrayal of Russia’s drift from chaotic democracy to consolidated autocracy. Jude Law embodies the figure at the center of that shift — not through flamboyant performance, but through absence, silence, and the unsettling calm of authority. The story, adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel, unfolds through the eyes of a fictional adviser who watches institutions buckle under the weight of a leader’s steady grip.
The response in Venice was divided: some applauded the film’s severity, others found its restraint suffocating. But everyone agreed — it was impossible to ignore.
The day’s other premiere could not have been more different. Jim Jarmusch returned with Father Mother Sister Brother, an “anti-action film” that meditates on fractured families across rural America, Dublin, and Paris. If Assayas dissected the mechanics of power, Jarmusch explored the quiet wreckage of relationships.
Elsewhere, Guillermo del Toro’s lavish reimagining of Frankenstein sparked both awe and skepticism. Critics were torn between praising its scale and dismissing it as over-engineered spectacle.
Yet Venice has never been only about cinema. Protests spilled into the streets over Gaza, with thousands demanding the festival take a stronger stance. That unrest lingers in the program itself: Kaouther Ben Hania’s upcoming The Voice of Hind Rajab, backed by Hollywood heavyweights, will revisit the killing of a Palestinian child — a reminder that the line between screen and world is thinner than ever.
This year, Venice feels less like a celebration of cinema and more like a reckoning: stories of control, loss, and resistance playing out both inside the theaters and outside their walls.
