Top-name doccers out in force at Venice 2026

Venice Biennale has programmed a slew of documentaries from top-name filmmakers for its 83^rd edition, running September 2 to 12, 2026. 

These include Wim Wenders’s From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Everest: The Other Side, Alex Gibney’s Musk, Victor Kossakovsky’s Holy Wood Dust, Barbara Kopple’s Union Town, Sergei Loznitza’s Imperium and the music docs What Love Builds by Russell Crowe, and the docopic Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger by Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace. Julia Loktev will also present My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, the follow-up to her 2024 film My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, which was short-listed for the 98th Academy Awards.

Elsewhere, six ‘films on films,’ ie docs about cinema, are selected, and which include profiles of Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, producer Galliano Juso and composer Nino Rota; Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki and Hong Kong film director/photographer Yonfan.

Short docs screening Out of Competition are Wild Asparagus by Avi Mograbi, about the director’s return to the Palestinian village of Saffuriya, and They’re Here by Laura Poitras and Rachel Mueller, described as a horror/documentary focussing on the ICE interventions and protests in Minneapolis.

There is a Venice Open Special Screening of Dai Nostra inviati. La Rai Racconta La Mostra Del Cinema Di Venezia 2001-2012, by Guiseppe Giannotti, Enrico Salvatori and Nicoletta Berardi, which tells the history of the Venice FF from 2001 to 2012.

Five further docs are selected for Giornate degli Autori, the independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, four of which screen in Venetian Nights (scroll down for details).

VENICE OPEN – NON-FICTION SELECTIONS

• Be Brave by Francesco Carrozzini. Synopsis: Be Brave is a documentary film that tells the remarkable personal and entrepreneurial story of Renzo Rosso, one of the most visionary figures in international fashion and communications. It does so by exploring and employing artificial intelligence in a provocative and original way, placing at the heart of the film the debate over the boundaries between human creativity and technology, and between what is real and what is artificial.
• What Love Builds by Russell Crowe. Synopsis: The filmtraces Crowe’s beginnings and career, exploring the privileged place music has occupied in his life and his “declared predilection” for being a musician over an actor. 
• Burgundy by Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw. Synopsis: The story of Burgundy’s most extraordinary characters and a celebration of the pleasure that defines their lives.
• Musk by Alex Gibney. Synopsis: Academy Award®-winner Alex Gibney’s Musk is an incisive look behind the legend of Elon Musk, the world’s most heralded “inventor-entrepreneur” who has enormous influence on the world in which we all live.
• The Road To Jericho by Amos Gitai. Synopsis: A journey from Jerusalem and start going to Jericho, keeping in mind that the first agreement that had been signed by Yitzhak Rabin was first dealing with Gaza and Jericho. We see a little hamlet of some Bedouin tents, called Khan El Ahmar. And it s a small community of 300 members. But recently there were threats to destroy it , which is not so much something that Rabin would like to hear.
• Citizen Osama by Ahmed Hassouna. Synopsis: In besieged northern Gaza, Osama, a former artistic photographer turned war documentarian, struggles to protect his wife and newborn while capturing devastation around him. Amid hunger, loss, and trauma, he persists, driven by duty and hope, offering a raw, intimate portrait of resilience and humanity in wartime.
• Union Town by Barbara Kopple. Synopsis: After HARLAN COUNTY, USA, and AMERICAN DREAM, two landmark cinéma vérité documentaries, UNION TOWN will be the third film in Barbara Kopple s triptych on labor rights. Set against the backdrop of New York City, the film follows delivery industry workers as they take on some of the world s most powerful corporate giants, touching on the challenges, joys and human elements that make this movement possible.
• Holy Wood Dust by Victor Kossakovsky. Synopsis: From devastated alpine forests to urban destinations where trees are treated as Christmas merchandise, we discover how plants have developed extraordinary sensitivity and sophisticated survival strategies: they can perceive and respond, learn and communicate, and can even remember. Holy Wood Dust is an invitation to radically reimagine the plant kingdom from a fresh and groundbreaking perspective.
• Letters From The Silenced Country by Andrei Kutsila. Synopsis: The film tells the story of the connection between Belarusian political prisoners and their loved ones across prison walls, showing how this fragile bond is sustained through letters.
• Biografia De Jorge Luis Borges by Mariano Llinas. Synopsis: An ambitious attempt to narrate Borges’s biography through objects and places. A 330-minute film which narrates not only the life of Borges but a century of literature and history.
• My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile by Julia Loktev. Synopsis: A sequel to the 2024 film My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, it follows several independent Russian journalists as they flee the country, following Putin government’s repression of free speech.
• Boatbuilders by Luke Lorentzen. Synopsis: Over the course of four vibrant seasons, Lorentzen follows members of Brooklin’s vibrant boatbuilding community throughout their meticulous construction of a 56-foot sailboat. Intertwining the rhythms of the boatyard with the surrounding natural world, the film explores the nature of attention itself and the meaning we create by engaging deeply with what we do, who we’re with, and where we are.
• Imperium by Sergei Loznitsa. Synopsis: Imperium is a striking visual journey across the USSR, built entirely from archival footage shot between 1970-73. The film uncovers the often-hidden colonial dynamics of the USSR and the quiet resilience of its many peoples.
• Shumei – The Living Legacy Of Kabuki by Takashi Miike. Synopsis: Shumei – The Living Legacy of Kabuki turns Miike’s camera on the succession ceremony in which Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII formally inherited the storied Danjūrō name in Kabuki, Japan’s classical performing art. The film records the behind-the-scenes preparations for the actor’s name-inheritance debut performance.
• Queer Edward II by Theo Rollason. Synopsis: Spring 1991: queer life is under attack in Britain, and Derek Jarman is turning Edward II into a radical protest film. Told through unseen behind-the-scenes footage, this is a story of the power and cost of queer visibility — then and now.
• Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger by Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace. Synopsis: the documentary explores the explosive emotional impact of Liam and Noel Gallagher’s triumphant Oasis reunion tour Live ’25 including their first joint interviews in over 25 years and never before filmed rehearsals, as well as celebrating what their music means to audiences and generations around the world.
• Dust by Tsai Ming-Liang. Synopsis: The 11th film in the Walker series follows the Walker through San Sebastián. He wanders around the Comb of the Wind, where the sea rises and breaks against the shore. Along the way, he passes an old Basque farmhouse, a silent man, a woman drinking water, a woman smoking, punks gathered in a rock bar, and people in the ancient city at sunset. The Diamond Sutra speaks of all living beings in these words: “Specks of dust are not specks of dust; therefore, they are called specks of dust”.
• Everest: The Other Side by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin. Synopsis: An intimate portrait of two people bound by love, ambition, and the pursuit of the impossible. Elite ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson fell deeply in love while reaching the pinnacle of their sport: Everest’s north face.
• From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor by Wim Wenders. Synopsis: Wim Wenders’ new film explores the work of one of the most influential contemporary architects, Pritzker Prize-winner Peter Zumthor. The immersive approach in 3D presents his architecture through the eyes of visitors, users, inhabitants or craftspeople. The viewers experience the buildings, as if they could walk around in them on their own, leaving them with an understanding of how architecture influences our perception of the world and how it shapes our lives.

VENICE OPEN – FILM ON FILMS

• Juso per ferie by Karen Di Porto. Synopsis: Juso per ferie is an affectionate, witty, and exuberant documentary that traces the personal and cinematic journey of Galliano Juso—an unconventional producer, tireless seeker of stories, discoverer of new talent, and a pioneering force in Italian genre cinema.
• Nino – Un Film Su Nino Rota by Walter Fasano. Synopsis: Nino Rota, the first Italian composer to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score: prolific, refined yet capable of striking deep emotional chords with audiences worldwide.
• The Pervert’s Guide To Utopias by Sophie Fiennes. Synopsis: Philosopher Slavoj Žižek is our guide through landscapes of classic film, music, social media, archive and webcasts. Making unexpected twists and turns, he maps the utopian illusions of our times. Through absurd juxtapositions and startling insights, we are seduced into recognising our fate, in order to change it.
• Joie De Vivre by Luca Guadagnino. Synopsis: A love letter to Bernardo Bertolucci, one of the most celebrated and influential filmmakers of the 20th century, exploring his cinema, his artistry, and his life. The documentary also benefits from the participation of several prominent figures from the world of film.
• Twist And Shoot Mister Suzuki by Yves Montmayeur. Synopsis: Seijun Suzuki is best known as a director of crime and action films whose iconoclastic vision in the 1960s defined films that became classics, including “Tokyo Drifter” and masterpiece “Branded to Kill”. He cannot be reduced to a simple image of a “cult” auteur. Suzuki is an authentic creator of forms, a visionary and spiritual father to filmmakers who pay tribute to his work. This documentary explores the pop, free-spirited, and violent world of an underappreciated filmmaker. Twist and Shoot!
• Intermission by Yonfan. Synopsis: Spanning nearly sixty years, Yonfan features his career in music, dance, photography, and writing through fifteen films in Intermission. This captivating cinematic journey stands as a witness to the essence of a changing world.

VENICE OPEN – SHORTS

• Wild Asparagus by Avi Mograbi. Synopsis: Filmmaker Avi Mograbi and his Arabic teacher and friend Ali Al Azhari go looking for the ruins of Ali’s village Saffuriya from which he was displaced during the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Instead, they find a life that never ceased.
• They’re Here by Laura Poitras, Rachel Mueller. Synopsis: They’re Here is a horror film that follows Edén Villa pseudonym) and anonymous Minneapolis residents as they evade and resist the paramilitary occupation of their city. Told in the tradition of dystopian cinema, They’re Here is set in a winter landscape where masked agents abduct children, residents travel in trunks, shackled prisoners are loaded onto airplanes within eyesight of vacationers, and bicyclists track the movements of an invading force.

VENICE OPEN – SPECIAL SCREENING

• Dai Nostra inviati. La Rai Racconta La Mostra Del Cinema Di Venezia 2001-2012 by Guiseppe Giannotti, Enrico Salvatori, Nicoletta Berardi. Synopsis: The sixth episode of From Our Correspondents tells the story of the Venice Film Festival in the early 21st century, covering the years from 2001 to 2012, once again through the reports filed by Rai’s correspondents. It spans the final year of Alberto Barbera’s first term as director, the two years under the late Moritz de Hadeln, the eight-year tenure of Marco Müller, and the first year of Barbera’s second stint as festival director.

GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI: SPECIAL EVENTS

• Carla Lonzi: A Feminist Story by Francesca Archibugi. Synopsis: Alongside the public figure Carla Lonzi, considered to be so uncompromising, there is much to say about her private side, as fascinating as it was contradictory. There’s her tenderness and emotional fragility, her dependence on her partner, hence on a man; her complicated feelings about motherhood; and strained relationships with other women in the practice of collective harikiri called “consciousness-raising”. Drawing on invaluable, unreleased archive material, the filmmaker Francesca Archibugi, who was very close to Lonzi, brings her public life and private story, her ideas, and her legacy to the screen for the first time. These are key to understanding what women around the world are still going through and fighting for.

GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI: VENETIAN NIGHTS

• The Legend of the Desert by Elisabetta Giannini. Synopsis: In the 1990s, an eight-year-old girl, Carolina, is traveling in a desert. There she meets the Saharawi, a people of exiles, chased out of their own land. In the refugee camps, the Saharawi believe that they will shortly be returning home, thanks to the referendum that will restore the Western Sahara, largely occupied by Morocco, to their own people. One day, as Carolina trudges through the dunes, a wind comes up and sweeps her into the future. Thirty years later: it’s still Carolina, but she’s an adult. She’s back in the same desert: the children she once knew are now young men and women, and new generation has replaced them: children who have just returned from Naples, which had taken them in, far from the desert, in a journey in the opposite direction. As past meets present, a painful truth sinks in: the referendum longed for by the Saharawi has turned into a mirage, and hope is dwindling in the face of new prospects, all of them troubling.
• Auber 89 by Giuseppe Schillaci. Synopsis: After an accident leaves actor Fatsah Bouyahmed with memory loss, previously unseen archival footage from Aubervilliers – the housing estate on the outskirts of Paris where he grew up – begins to reconnect him with both his own personal past and the collective memory of his community. Filmed in the 1980s when an ambitious urban renewal project was underway, the images capture a neighborhood striving to improve its living conditions and imagine a better future. As Fatsah revisits the footage forty years later, memories of family, friendship, music, and daily life resurface alongside the social tensions of the time: the growing racism, inequality, and exclusion. Moving between past and present, Auber 89 revisits a fleeting moment of hope before disillusionment reshaped the Parisian suburbs, while the textures of television and VHS ground the story in the sensory world of the 80s.
• Memoria del lampo (Memories of Lightning) by Riccardo Giacconi. Synopsis: Sibilla, a radio reporter, travels to a small town in central Italy to make an audio documentary. There, in 1982, a young woman had been killed, in an act of apparently inexplicable violence. Through voices and sounds, Sibilla evokes the ghosts of a past event, recording the last reverberations of the victim’s memory.
• Uno si distrae al bivio (Southern Peasants) by Alessandra Lancellotti. Synopsis: Lucania, or the Basilicata, is a region in southern Italy where industrious farmhands have inexorably worked the hills planted with wheat for thousands of years. The labor of yore and the modern farmers of today coexist in a single era, caring for the land, crops and livestock, as the seasons come and go. Their sweat and tears are sublimated by Guastamacchia, a farmhand and songster who crosses the region as a day laborer. His voice evokes the tales of survival of a rural community marked by decades-long labor struggles and militancy. For these workers, who have transmitted their stories orally only, song is their elected form of speech, their universal language. The music flows to the verses of Rocco Scotellaro, the bard of freedom for the land workers, a militant among them and on the printed page. In what is left of the rural culture of the 20th century, the farm workers strain to hand down ancestral practices to a future as yet unclear.