45 h. ago ‘It’s silent but does the heavy lifting’: the soft power of the white shirt

The white shirt speaks of formality without trying too hard and is making a comeback on the catwalk and on screenVictoria Beckham has positioned herself as a pop star, mother, perfumier, TikToker and fashion designer. But whatever job next month’s Netflix documentary focuses on – details are scant, but it’s thought the early October series will end at her Paris catwalk show – she will always be scrutinised over how she looks. How to temper that? Wear a plain white shirt.The documentary poster released this week shows Beckham wearing a diamond tennis bracelet, open-collar white shirt – and nothing else. Last week, the Princess of Wales appeared in public at the Natural History Museum, also in a plain white shirt. Earlier this month, the Duchess of Sussex launched her Netflix series in a white shirt (one of seven in fact), and when Taylor Swift recently announced her new album she did so wearing a white shirt. Laura Dern wore hers twice at the Venice film festival, and the woman with ...

Events

5 d. ago Journalist responds after Ayo Edebiri excluded from Me Too and Black Lives Matter question

The exchange at the Venice Film Festival made headlines after going viral

Politics

7 d. ago The Voice of Hind Rajab should have won Venice’s top prize. But the result wasn’t a cop

Many felt Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza docufiction was robbed when Jim Jarmusch’s latest took the top prize. Yet accusations of moral cowardice on the part of the jury are naive and unfairThere are standing ovations and there are jury decisions.Jim Jarmusch’s droll, quirky, very charming film Father Mother Sister Brother got a mere six minutes for its standing ovation at Venice – though one day we’re going to have to introduce some Olympic-style standardisation to these timings. But it got the top prize, the Golden Lion, from Alexander Payne’s jury. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago The Voice of Hind Rajab was better than the film which won Venice. But that result wasn’t a cop

Many felt Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza docufiction was robbed when Jim Jarmusch’s latest took the top prize. Yet accusations of moral cowardice on the part of the jury are naive and unfairThere are standing ovations and there are jury decisions.Jim Jarmusch’s droll, quirky, very charming film Father Mother Sister Brother got a mere six minutes for its standing ovation at Venice – though one day we’re going to have to introduce some Olympic-style standardisation to these timings. But it got the top prize, the Golden Lion, from Alexander Payne’s jury. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago The 2025 Venice Film Festival is over. Here's everything you need to know

The 82nd Venice Film Festival has wrapped up, but the buzz continues

Culture

7 d. ago Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, starring Cate Blanchett, surprise winner of Venice Golden Lion

The Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing account of a Palestinian child’s death in Gaza, won the runner-up Silver LionUS indie director Jim Jarmusch unexpectedly won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on Saturday with Father Mother Sister Brother, a three-part meditation on the uneasy tie between parents and their adult children.Although his gentle comedy received largely positive reviews, it had not been a favourite for the top prize, with many critics instead tipping the Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing true-life account of the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the Gaza war. In the end, the film directed by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania took the runner-up Silver Lion. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Venice Film Festival, by the numbers: From standing ovations to Campari spritzes

From a record-breaking standing ovation to the ever-present Campari spritzes to even on-screen subtitles, the 2025 Venice Film Festival was a bounty of interesting numbers

Culture

7 d. ago Photos from Venice Film Festival awards ceremony where Jim Jarmusch wins top honor

The 2025 Venice Film Festival wrapped up with Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” taking the top prize, edging out higher-profile contenders. The film, starring Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett, is a quietly humorous look at family relationships.

Culture

7 d. ago Alessandra Ambrosio, 44, sizzles in a sweeping embellished gown as she attends the Venice Film Festival closing ceremony

The model, 44, stunned in a sweeping gold gown embellished with silver detailing.

Culture

7 d. ago Emma Watson is the queen of class in Gucci mini dress as she steps out for the last day of Venice Film Festival

The Harry Potter legend, 35, made a stylish appearance in the Italian city as she put on a very leggy display in the beige sleeveless number, featuring chic leather pockets.

Culture

8 d. ago Move over fashion week: Chanel and Dior soft launch creations at Venice film festival

Big brands use red carpets and gondolas in Italian city to show looks from newly installed designersAfter a year of musical chairs in the fashion industry, September is poised to be one of its biggest show months ever, with debut collections from 15 creative directors.Rather than waiting for the catwalk, over the past 10 days brands including Chanel and Dior have given themselves a head start at the Venice film festival, using its starry red carpets and even gondolas to soft launch looks from their newly installed designers. Continue reading...

Culture

8 d. ago Venice Film Festival draws to a close and will announce its awards, which can give an Oscars boost

The 82nd Venice Film Festival is wrapping up as juries decide on the awards Saturday

Events

8 d. ago ‘Humanity is facing a reckoning’: Venice shrugs off the glamour to take aim at politics

Stars waved as usual from the city’s water taxis, but there was a repeated focus on films that help audiences interpret a chaotic worldFor most of its 82 years, Venice has been perceived as the world’s most glamorous film festival. This year was no exception: stars including Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law and George Clooney dutifully waved from canals and trooped down red carpets (although Law tripped while on a water taxi and Clooney got ill).But the films themselves struck a different note. Jury president Alexander Payne may have rebutted questions about current affairs during his opening press conference, declaring himself concerned only with discussing cinema, but cinema at Venice this year was concerned largely, it turned out, with discussing current events. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Meet your descendants – and your future self! A trip to Venice film festival’s extended reality island

A flourishing lineup of immersive storytelling experiments are taking visitors into novels, nightclubs and outer spaceIn the largest cinema at the Venice film festival, guests gather for the premiere of Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro’s lavish account of a man who dared to play God and created a monster. When the young scientist reanimates a dead body for his colleagues, some see it as a trick while others are outraged. “It’s an abomination, an obscenity,” shouts one hide-bound old timer, and his alarm is partly justified. Every technological breakthrough opens Pandora’s box. You don’t know what’s going to crawl out or where it will then choose to go.Behind the main festival venue sits the small ruined island of Lazzaretto Vecchio. Since 2017, it’s been home to Venice Immersive, the event’s groundbreaking section dedicated to showcasing and supporting XR (extended reality) storytelling. Before that it was a storage facility, before that a plague quarantine zone. Eliza McNitt, this ...

Culture

9 d. ago Lingerie model tennis star makes shock return home after 'fleeing for alleged tax evasion'

Camila Giorgi was a surprise guest at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival over the weekend, just months after the former tennis star was accused of tax evasion

Events

9 d. ago The Voice of Hind Rajab review – docufiction is fierce, vehement and heart

In an audacious move, director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of the five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli armyThere can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people ...

Politics

9 d. ago Kim Novak's emotional return to the spotlight at Venice Film Festival

Kim Novak has made an emotional return to the spotlight at 92

Culture

9 d. ago A House of Dynamite review: The most exciting movie at Venice Film Festival could lead to Kathryn Bigelow's second Best Director Oscar, writes BRIAN VINER

How might the United States respond in the event of a nuclear attack, with less than 20 minutes before an incoming missile lands on Chicago? 

Culture

1 week ago Jason Momoa disguises his 'ugly' feet with bright pink nail polish at In the Hand of Dante premiere

The US actor, 46, wore a light pink suit on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday

Politics

1 week ago All the best looks from Venice Film Festival 2025: Greta Lee, Rooney Mara, Emma Stone

The stars are pulling out all the stops with their Venice style for 2025

Culture

1 week ago Jason Momoa makes bold fashion statement as he struts on the red carpet with pink pedicure and matching sandals for In The Hand Of Dante Venice Film Festival premiere

Jason Momoa made a bold fashion statement in head-to-toe pink as he attended In The Hand Of Dante's Venice Film Festival premiere on Wednesday.

Culture

1 week ago A House Of Dynamite leaves critics in awe with 'horrifically gripping and unsettling' nuclear war scenes dubbed 'more terrifying than most horror films'

The American political thriller premiered at the Venice International Film Festival on September 2 and will land on Netflix on October 24.

Events

1 week ago In the shattering ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab,’ the story of a 6

Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania's” The Voice of Hind Rajab” is debuting at the Venice Film Festival Wednesday

Politics

1 week ago 90 is the new 40! As Kim Novak steps back into the spotlight at 92 the nonagenarian legends who are proving that age is just a number

Kim Novak was back in the spotlight this week with her appearance at the Venice Film Festival. And she isn't the only nonagenarian still enjoying her decades in showbiz.

Politics

1 week ago Dead Man’s Wire review – Gus Van Sant calls the shots with surreal true

Venice film festivalAl Pacino, Colman Domingo and Myha’la excel in this gripping take on the events of 1977 when an Indianapolis businessman held his mortgage broker hostage With terrific chutzpah, black-comic flair and cool, cruel unsentimentality, screenwriter Austin Kolodney and director Gus Van Sant have made a true-crime suspense thriller set in the 1970s, tapping into the spirit of both Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon and Network. Apart from anything else, it is a reminder that in that post-Kennedy, post-Watergate age, plenty of lawless and febrile things happened that would now be considered phenomena purely attributable to social media.In 1977, an Indianapolis businessman named Tony Kiritsis, with many acquaintances in the police department, kidnapped a mortgage broker named Richard Hall, and tied Hall’s neck with a “dead man’s wire” to his shotgun, which would therefore go off if police sharpshooters tried to kill him. Kiritsis even paraded his victim like this on TV while...

Events

1 week ago Portobello review – Marco Bellocchio’s glorious saga of TV stars, mafia prisoners and lace doilies

Venice film festivalIn the first two episodes of a six-part series, the stardom of 80s primetime host Enzo Tortora is cleverly crosscut with the scramble of a mob secretary who implicates him – and his parrot – in drug traffickingMarco Bellocchio, the tireless warhorse of Italian cinema, kicks up a swirling dust cloud of corruption with this fabulous, stranger-than-fiction account of an 80s TV star convicted of conspiring with the Camorra. Shot for the streaming service HBO Max, it is the director’s second historical miniseries after 2022’s Exterior Night, about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, and features the same lead player in Fabrizio Gifuni, an actor who has surely cornered the market in playing glossy public figures whose lives are about to take a hellish turn. Bellocchio’s dramas typically inhabit this kind of shonky, venal moral universe. The ground is liable to drop away pretty much at any moment.Gifuni stars as Enzo Tortora, a primetime TV presenter in the twinkling Terry Wog...

Events

1 week ago Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine. Your voice can still make a difference | Arwa Mahdawi

As the war gets livestreamed to our phones, it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel helpless. But even small acts of activism add upI don’t know if Frankenstein star Christoph Waltz is normally a man of few words but he didn’t have much to say at a recent Venice film festival press conference. Waltz uttered only six words, with “CGI is for losers” constituting four of them. The remaining two were “I don’t”, in response to a question about how he stays hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”.Waltz is certainly not alone in despairing of a world which seems to elevate liars, cheats, and adjudicated sexual predators. It’s hard to feel hope when a genocide has been livestreamed to our phones for almost two years and there is no justice in sight; just a systematic slaughter of the journalists who serve as messengers. No peace prospects on the horizon; just well-paid consultants putting together ethnic cleansing prospectuses so a “Gaza Riviera” can be built. (Oh, sorry, we’re supposed to say “...

Politics

1 week ago In ‘Marc, by Sofia,’ an intimate portrait of fashion luminary and friendship

Sofia Coppola's documentary about Marc Jacobs has premiered Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival

Culture

1 week ago Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson unrecognisable as he drops 60lbs for upcoming true story film

The actor showed off his significantly slimmed down frame as the Venice Film Festival on Monday while promoting his upcoming movie about the life of MMA fighter Mark Kerr.

Politics

1 week ago Photos show highlights from week 2 of the Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival is in full swing with a starry batch of awards season hopefuls arriving in Italy for glamorous premieres and discussions about their films. Emily Blunt, Amanda Seyfried and Dwayne Johnson are just some of the stars who have new films premiering at the Venice festival, which runs through Sept. 6.

Culture

1 week ago Kaia Gerber, 23, wows in sexy plunging top as she joins boyfriend Lewis Pullman, 32, in leading stars at Venice Film Festival event

The model, 23, who has been seen packing on the PDA with the actor, 32, in the Italian city, wore a plunging crop top.

Culture

1 week ago Kim Novak uncensored: Legendary actress, 92, is finally given the freedom to speak her side of the story as critics deem her 'impressively unfiltered'

After stepping away from the limelight, Kim Novak returned to Venice Film Festival on Monday after releasing a documentary about her poverty-stricken upbringing

Culture

1 week ago Secrets of The Rock's body transformation: Expert reveals how Dwayne Johnson likely lost 60lbs to be 'taken seriously' in Hollywood

Famed for his huge stature, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson stunned fans this week when he debuted a much slimmer frame during the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Politics

1 week ago Straight Circle review – boisterous border guard satire from a director to watch

Venice film festivalOscar Hudson’s feature debut, starring twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor as ritual-performing representatives of fictional warring nations, is an absurdist nightmareBritish documentary and ad director Oscar Hudson makes his feature debut in the Venice critics week sidebar with this high-concept anti-war satire, a through-the-looking-glass absurdist nightmare about realising that the otherness of your enemy is an illusion. There are some bold and ambitious images here, and some interesting split-screen work. Maybe there’s an issue about the style and substance ratio and perhaps the running time is indulgent, but this is a strong piece of work.Twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor play two soldiers of equal rank in opposing armies, called Pte Warne and Pte Arthur. They represent two nations of fictional Ruritanian weirdness, formerly at war but who have evidently concluded a tensely unstable peace treaty. Warne has a resplendent white uniform and, like the rest of his co...

Politics

1 week ago Venice Film Festival writer holds up ‘We are all an audience to genocide’ poster on red carpet

A writer at Venice Film Festival held up a sign which read “we are all an audience to genocide" whilst walking down the red carpet.

Events

1 week ago Kaia Gerber, 23, looks chic in a plunging crop top as she joins boyfriend Lewis Pullman, 32, at Venice Film Festival after packing on the PDA

The model, 23, who has been seen packing on the PDA with the actor, 32, in the Italian city, wore a plunging crop top.

Culture

1 week ago The Smashing Machine: Dwayne Johnson tipped for Oscar buzz as film earns standing ovation

The film received a 15-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival overnight

Politics

1 week ago The Rock shows off dramatic new look for The Smashing Machine at Venice Film Festival

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson showed off a dramatic new look at the premiere of his new movie The Smashing Machine at Venice Film Festival on Monday (1 September).

Culture

1 week ago Kathryn Bigelow unveils political thriller ‘A House of Dynamite’ at Venice Film Festival

Kathryn Bigelow tackles geopolitics in her new film “A House of Dynamite.”

Politics

1 week ago Amanda Seyfried borrows Julia Roberts's EXACT look at Venice Film Festival after begging her stylist to source the actress's outfit on Instagram

The actress, 39, looked incredible as she arrived at The Testament Of Ann Lee photocall in a two-piece suit.

Culture

1 week ago Kim Novak, 92, looks almost unrecognisable as she receives the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice International Film Festival

The actress, 92, channeled old Hollywood glamour as she stepped out in an emerald and black gown to accept the award.

Culture

1 week ago Emily Blunt steals the show in a dazzling strapless gown as she puts on a playful display with The Rock at The Smashing Machine premiere during The Venice Film Festival

Emily Blunt made sure to turn heads in a glamorous strapless gown as she attended The Smashing Machine premiere during the 82nd Venice Film Festival on Monday. 

Culture

1 week ago Putin biopic with Jude Law as dictator has viewers claim star looks like another actor

The Wizard of the Kremlin, a satire following the rise of Mad Vlad, premiered at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend - but many were in hysterics over Jude Law's appearance

Politics

1 week ago Emily Blunt steals the show in a dazzling strapless gown as she joins The Rock at The Smashing Machine premiere at 82nd Venice Film Festival

Emily Blunt made sure to turn heads in a glamorous strapless gown as she attended The Smashing Machine premiere during the 82nd Venice Film Festival on Monday. 

Culture

1 week ago Vertigo star Kim Novak reveals mother tried to kill her as a child in new documentary

‘Kim Novak’s Vertigo’ is screening at the Venice Film Festival this week

Events

1 week ago Jacob Elordi accused of 'DIVA' behavior as he snaps at Venice Film Festival official in tense exchange

Jacob Elordi was branded 'super rude' as he got into a tense altercation with a Venice Film Festival official at the world premiere of Frankenstein on Saturday.

Politics

1 week ago Halsey showcases stunning figure in corset gown while joined by hunky fiance Avan Jogia at amfAR Gala in Venice

The 30-year-old singer was joined on the red carpet by Canadian actor hunk Avan Jogia, 33, at the amfAR Gala on Sunday night which was happening amid the Venice Film Festival 2025.

Politics

1 week ago Dwayne Johnson, 53, stuns fans with 'much slimmer' frame and 'loss of muscle mass' while promoting The Smashing Machine

Dwayne Johnson has stunned fans with his 'much slimmer' frame, after unveiling a new look during the Venice Film Festival. 

Politics

1 week ago Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and 7 more actors who transformed into politicians

Jude Law looks totally unrecognisable as Russian president Vladimir Putin in the new movie, The Wizard of Kremlin, which recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival

Politics

1 week ago The Testament of Ann Lee review – strikingly strange portrait of radically ecstatic Shaker leader

Venice film festivalAmanda Seyfried plays the 18th-century missionary who took her message to the New World, in Mona Fastvold’s elusive film‘Our ordeal is worth it!” This is the cry of one of the faithful in Mona Fastvold’s movie, co-written with her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist. It is a vehement, fervent, striking but sometimes baffling drama about the historical figure of Ann Lee, who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England as leader of the fundamentalist Shaker movement.As the embodiment of Christ’s second coming, Lee took her radical message to the New World and in pre-revolutionary America founded an enduring community of souls, persecuted all over again by the new patriarchy for being a woman and a pacifist. Her Shakers were known among other things for their skill in stylishly elegant and minimalist furniture – although the connection with Christ’s profession is unstressed. Lee is played by Amanda Seyfried, with Lewis Pullman as her...

Politics

1 week ago Kim Novak’s Vertigo review – the dizzying demands on Hitchcock’s leading lady

Venice film festivalAn intensely personal interview of the 92-year-old Hollywood star delivers showstopping moments for fans of the golden age of moviesAt 92 years old, Hollywood movie star Kim Novak – legendary of course for her doppelganger starring role in Hitchcock’s Vertigo – is a vivid and, in fact, yearningly romantic and demanding presence in this gallant, cinephile documentary-interview filmed by director and Novak superfan Alexandre O Philippe. She is one of the very few golden age stars still with us, and maybe the title of this film is a playful pun: at the very apex of Hollywood history, perhaps Novak feels dizzy looking down from her mythic height.Philippe himself is more than qualified for this kind of intensely personal exegesis, having in the past made intriguing films about David Lynch’s debt to The Wizard of Oz and about the Psycho shower scene. With a touch of mischief and misdirection, he begins his film by simply playing a voice note that Novak has sent him, in...

Events

1 week ago Georgina's VERY bling get up! Ronaldo's fiancée dons £2.4 million worth of custom jewellery

Georgina showed off her 30-carat diamond ring, said to be worth £2.2 million, as she held her hands up while at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Economics

1 week ago Georgina's VERY bling get up! Ronaldo's fiancée dons £2.4 million worth of custom jewellery  at Venice Film Festival

Georgina showed off her 30-carat diamond ring, said to be worth £2.2 million, as she held her hands up while at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Economics

1 week ago All the best looks from Venice Film Festival 2025: Cate Blanchett, Jacob Elordi and Emma Stone

The stars are pulling out all the stops with their Venice style for 2025

Culture

1 week ago Ronaldo's fiancée Georgina Rodriguez flashes her giant $3million engagement ring as she sizzles in a lace dress at the Venice Film Festival

Cristiano Ronaldo's fiancée Georgina Rodriguez flashed her giant sparkling engagement ring on Sunday as she hit the red carpet at the Filming Italy Venice Award.

Culture

1 week ago Dwayne Johnson, Oscar contender? ‘The Smashing Machine’ starts buzz at Venice Film Festival

Dwayne Johnson takes a serious turn as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine,” premiering Monday at the Venice Film Festival

Politics

1 week ago Jacob Elordi flirts up a storm with mystery woman after breaking down in tears over 13

The Australian 28-year-old beamed with delight as he chatted up the brunette while touring around Italy in a what appeared to be a van

Events

1 week ago Paris Jackson commands attention in a dramatic caped gown as she joins dashing Colman Domingo and Jude Law at star

The 27-year-old daughter of late singer Michael Jackson looked nothing short of sensational as she graced the red carpet in a dramatic caped gown.

Events

1 week ago Ronaldo's fiancée Georgina Rodriguez flashes her giant $3million engagement ring as she sizzles in a lace dress at the Filming Italy Venice Award amid the 82nd Film Festival

Cristiano Ronaldo's fiancée Georgina Rodriguez flashed her giant sparkling engagement ring on Sunday as she hit the red carpet at the Filming Italy Venice Award.

Culture

1 week ago Cate Blanchett turns heads in quirky bird feather gown as she graces the red carpet at premiere of her film Father Mother Sister Brother during Venice International Film Festival

The acclaimed actress, 56, ensured all eyes were on her in a striking black gown with a voluminous skirt made up of layers of dark grey feathers.

Politics

1 week ago My Tennis Maestro review – unforced errors keep Italian coming

Venice film festivalPierfrancesco Favino is a robust lead as a teenage tennis hopeful’s charming yet flawed new coach in a film that’s too long and too indecisive to stand up to recent big hittersWe have had some sparky tennis movies recently, such as Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard, and it seemed at first as if this coming-of-age comedy from Italian actor turned director Andrea Di Stefano could be joining them. But despite a very robust lead performance from Pierfrancesco Favino, the enjoyably grizzled alpha male of Italian cinema, this completely runs aground in the third act, quite unable to decide if it should offer the traditional comeback story of an underdog sports movie, or if it should pursue its implied repudiation of the win-at-all-costs ethic. The other issue is whether its young hero should ignore what his dad has to say in favour of an attractive, if flawed, new mentor. The film does in fact appear finally to get off the fence on ...

Politics

1 week ago Jude Law avoids red carpet snaps with his wife Phillipa Coan as she makes rare public appearance at his premiere during Venice International Film Festival

The actor, 52, who tied the knot with Phillipa, 38, in 2019, appeared on the red carpet for The Wizard Of The Kremlin premiere, however he and his wife avoided being snapped together.

Politics

1 week ago Father Mother Sister Brother review – Blanchett and Rampling pick at family guilt in Jarmusch’s delectable triptych

Venice film festivalJim Jarmusch explores the awkwardness and closeness of parents with their grownup children in three slyly comic panels of drama set in the US, Dublin and ParisJim Jarmusch has made anthology films before: Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). In fact, he could claim to be the pre-eminent specialist in this now very unfashionable movie form. But with his new one, a deeply pleasing and gently quietist triptych on the subject of family, he is giving us something new and personal.It’s the sense of mortality and the gathering cloud of darkness over our heads as we enter middle age, a perpetual nagging worry about the health and happiness of our elderly parents, with the guilt and sadness of not going to see them, or seeing them only rarely, and the related feeling of closeness – or perhaps the opposite – with your siblings for whom these parents are the number one topic of conversation. Then there’s the feeling of relief mixed with...

Politics

1 week ago The Wizard of the Kremlin review – Jude Law is Putin in adaptation of Kremlin spin doctor bestseller

Venice film festival The rise of Vladimir Putin, chillingly played by Law, is portrayed through the eyes of a wily insider, but Paul Dano’s protagonist cuts a one-note figureGiuliano da Empoli’s smash-hit satirical novel The Wizard of the Kremlin, about a Putin spin doctor called Vadim Baranov and based on shadowy Russian politician Vladislav Surkov, has now been converted into an exasperatingly laborious and literal-minded movie, burdened with endless dull voiceover. It has been written for the screen by its estimable director Olivier Assayas, working with the formidable author and reportage journalist Emmanuel Carrère; Carrère in fact has a cameo here, playing a supercilious French figure at a raucous Moscow student party in the early 90s, patronisingly informing the young people present that it was the communism they’ve just rejected that really believed in the arts.The action takes us through the 1990s decline of ailing president Boris Yeltsin and the promotion of FSB chief Vlad...

Politics

1 week ago All the best looks from Venice Film Festival 2025: Alexa Chung, Amal Clooney, Emma Stone, Jacob Elordi

The stars are pulling out all the stops with their Venice style for 2025

Culture

1 week ago Jude Law reveals ‘positive’ part of portraying Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin

Law’s new film premiered at the Venice Film Festival

Politics

1 week ago Jude Law doesn’t 'fear repercussions' after playing Putin in divisive new movie

The actor insisted the film is not “looking for controversy for controversy’s sake”, whilst being grilled by journalists at the Venice Film Festival

Politics

2 w. ago Broken English review – Marianne Faithfull’s last glow, as she recounts past lives

Venice film festivalThe charismatic Faithfull is quizzed by a fictional ministry fronted by Tilda Swinton about a confounding career, from 60s It girl to art scene doyenneMarianne Faithfull led different lives and was cast in various roles. Some roles she chose and wrote herself; others were forced upon her, like an ugly hat or an ill-fitting suit. She was the convent girl and the teenage bride, the 60s It girl and the rock star’s girlfriend. She was the pop singer, the folk singer, the tragic addict and the indomitable survivor. Broken English, a flawed but ardent new documentary from Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, effectively arranges all of these incarnations like museum exhibits and invites its subject to review each one in turn – and then smash the glass to set them free.Faithfull broke the mould, and so it is fitting that the film of her life should do the same, except that Forsyth and Pollard’s main conceit feels jerry-rigged and overdramatised to the point where it risks obs...

Politics

2 w. ago Laura Harrier packs on the PDA with her new man during Venice Film Festival as she appears to move on after split from ex

The American actress and model, 35, and fashion consultant Sam reportedly separated earlier this year after more than four years together.

Culture

2 w. ago Seeing double! Princess Diana's nieces Amelia and Eliza stun in sheer, pastel looks as Spencer twins mirror each other at Venice Film Festival

Lady Amelia and Lady Eliza Spencer sashayed down the red carpet ethereal ensembles as they returned to Venice to attend the 82nd edition of the Film Festival.

Politics

2 w. ago James Bond favourite looks unrecognisable with bushy beard and long hair

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is hotly tipped to play the next James Bond, caused quite a stir at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday at the premiere of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

Politics

2 w. ago Jude Law debuts portrayal of Vladimir Putin in 'The Wizard of the Kremlin' at Venice Film Festival

Jude Law transforms into Vladimir Putin in “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” premiering Sunday at the Venice Film Festival

Politics

2 w. ago Julia Roberts packs on rare PDA with husband Danny Moder in back of taxi after solo red carpet in Venice

Julia Roberts may have been solo on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival , but she definitely had a plus-one for the ride back to her hotel.

Politics

2 w. ago Shailene Woodley and Ben Foster are unrecognizable as they ditch glam for '70s style at Venice Film Festival

Shailene Woodley and Ben Foster took the Venice Film Festival by storm on Saturday when they arrived in matching retro outfits.

Culture

2 w. ago Paris Jackson puts on a daring display in a plunging leather gown as she joins Rosie Huntington

The daughter of Michael Jackson was among the stars who jetted to Venice Film Festival for the premiere of the Guillermo del Toro remake on Saturday.

Politics

2 w. ago Frankenstein review – Guillermo del Toro reanimates a classic as a monstrously beautiful melodrama

Venice film festivalOscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi star as the freethinking anatomist and his creature as Mary Shelley’s story is reimagined with bombast in the director’s unmistakable visual styleGuillermo del Toro has created a movie about a grotesquely unnatural attempt to make a human being shocking in his physical strangeness but that’s enough about his film version of Pinocchio. Now Del Toro has written and directed a bombastic but watchable new version of Mary Shelley’s great novel and makes of it a stately melodrama, starring Oscar Isaac as the anatomist and passionate freethinker Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creature: no passé neck-bolts or big fringey forehead, of course, and if you compare him with portrayals by other actors – Boris Karloff, Peter Boyle, Robert De Niro – he is, for all the picturesque prosthetic scars, the nearest this iconic figure has come to being a bit of a hottie.It’s an epic bromance between scientist and monster, both of whom speak wit...

Events

2 w. ago Below the Clouds review – a ghostly yet luminous cinematic mosaic of Naples crowns a superb trio

Venice film festivalThere is a real end-of-days quality to Gianfranco Rosi’s utterly distinctive documentary of war, violence, cynicism and the climate crisis in an uneasy cityGianfranco Rosi has made a movie that could be thought of as the last of a conceptual trilogy about normal life and spiritual life in Italy: the first was his Sacro GRA from 2013 about Rome, for which Rosi won the Venice Golden Lion; the next was Fire at Sea about the migration crisis as experienced in Lampedusa in Sicily. Now there is Below the Clouds, in luminous black-and-white. It’s another of his brilliantly composed docu-mosaic assemblages of scenes and tableaux, shot from fixed camera positions without any camera narration.The title is taken from Jean Cocteau: “Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world.” Rosi reports from Naples, a city uneasily preoccupied with the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions for which it is famed, and with the great catastrophe of AD79 that buried nearby Pompeii. We see the ar...

Politics

2 w. ago George Clooney health woes revealed: From horror motorcycle crash to hospitalisation for drastic weight loss

The actor, 64, was forced to skip a press conference on Thursday for his brand new movie Jay Kelly after being advised by doctors to rest.

Events

2 w. ago Julia Roberts embraces husband in rare snap after divisive Venice Film Festival debut

Hollywood royalty, Julia Roberts, has been married to the father of her kids, Danny Moder, since 2002, but usually keeps her private life firmly out the spotlight

Culture

2 w. ago Late Fame review – Willem Dafoe is a natural poet in a slice

Venice film festivalA postman’s forgotten poetry collection finds new admirers in a tale of how the mystique of the past filters to the presentEd Saxberger is an amiable, unassuming New Yorker on the cusp of old age who works at the post office and wears a pen behind one ear. In his youth, he published an anthology of poetry called Way Past Go, which caused barely a ripple and quickly slipped out of print. Then one day he is accosted outside his apartment by an NYU student, who explains that he stumbled across Way Past Go at a secondhand bookstore and was transported, blown away and could scarcely believe what he’d found. “You’re a man of letters,” the student tells Saxberger, which is undeniably true given that he spends his days sorting them.Hitchcock once said that nine-tenths of a film’s success is in the casting, by which measure Late Fame already qualifies as a hit. Saxberger is portrayed with a loose, warm-leather ease by Willem Dafoe, who makes the man look bemused but never...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘I held on to what’s important’: Kim Novak on Hitchcock, Trump and her Venice lifetime achievement award

One of the stars of Hollywood’s golden era, 92-year-old says prize as much about her refusal to be controlled as her on-screen performancesShe was the No 1 box office star in the late 50s, but for decades Kim Novak, the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, has lived a life of quiet seclusion. Now, at the age of 92, the last of the great, glamorous movie stars of Hollywood’s golden era is back in the spotlight. She is being honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice film festival, where a documentary about her life and career, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, is premiering.For Novak, it is a tribute not just to her acting but to her lifelong refusal to be controlled and manipulated by Hollywood, or anyone else. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Megadoc review – absorbing account of an impressive and indomitable Francis Ford Coppola at work

Venice film festivalMike Figgis’s valuable documentary shows how Coppola worked with actors on his $120m passion project MegalopolisWhen Francis Ford Coppola finally started work on his retrofuturist ancient Rome drama-parable Megalopolis (the self-funded passion project he had been nurturing for decades), he invited another director to be a fly on the wall and make a record of his work in progress. This was Mike Figgis, whose limber digital film-making skills were ideal for the task. The result is a thoroughly watchable, respectful, valuable and intimate account of a great film-maker at work – particularly rehearsing actors, a part of directing very rarely shown. (Coppola takes his cast through some wacky exploratory games, like an experimental theatre company.)It’s always impressive to see the indomitable Coppola in full rhetorical flow: holding forth, opining, schooling one and all on what happens when a film is made and how glorious it is to spend and even lose money in the serv...

Economics

2 w. ago Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ to premiere at Venice with Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi

Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi are expected at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday for the world premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”

Politics

2 w. ago Cate Blanchett is all smiles as she makes a chic arrival to her Italian hotel by boat amid Venice Film Festival

Cate Blanchett was the picture of understated glamour this week as she continued to enjoy her stay in Italy amid the Venice Film Festival.

Culture

2 w. ago Paris Jackson stuns in a figure hugging purple dress as she joins chic Noomi Rapace and Tilda Swinton at glamorous Tom Ford dinner in Venice

The great and good of Hollywood have gathered in Venice for the 82nd annual International Film Festival in the Italian City this week.

Politics

2 w. ago Julia Roberts caught in #MeToo storm as new film sparks controversy at Venice Film Festival

The actress denied the films ambiguous handling of a campus sexual assault allegation risked echoing harmful cultural patterns

Events

2 w. ago George Clooney returns to Venice Film Festival after 'devastating' health blow

George Clooney was forced to pull out of events at the Venice Film Festival due to ill health.

Culture

2 w. ago After the Hunt review – Julia Roberts faces a dilemma in Guadagnino’s muddled campus accusation drama

Venice film festivalLuca Guadagnino’s latest – also starring Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield – is clenched in its own sense of relevance, as a desire to find complexity in a scandal at Yale becomes a noncommittal jumble of ideasLuca Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama from screenwriter Nora Garrett, broadly in the tradition of David Mamet’s Oleanna or Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things. It is worryingly muddled and contrived, perhaps in need of further script drafts to excavate a clearer and more satisfying drama inside.Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri star, with Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg in supporting roles; they are all doing their considerable best, each frankly hampered by the unfocused and uncertain characterisation in the material itself, which, by the time it finally reaches its coda-finale of confrontation, is almost bizarrely inert, anticlimactic and incoherent. The movie is clenched with its own sense of con...

Events

2 w. ago Kevin Spacey attends Venice Film Festival with directorial comeback

You might consider it bad form - even rude - to gatecrash your second film festival in a year.

Culture

2 w. ago Amal Clooney had a 'non surgical facelift' before walking on the red carpet at Venice Film Festival and upstaging husband George

Amal Clooney walked the red carpet at Venice Film festival last night to support her husband George Clooney.

Culture

2 w. ago At Work review – photographer ditches career for gig economy and writing in poverty drama

Venice film festivalThough the film is eventful enough, there is a bland placidity with which Bastien Bouillon plays a man following his dreams in this quaintly naive storyValérie Donzelli has given us a strange mixture of realism and quaint naivety in this film, based on an autobiographical novel by French photographer turned novelist Franck Courtès. There are some interesting insights into the gig economy but some very cliched and implausible representations of what happens when you become a literary author.With a kind of unvarying bland placidity, Bastien Bouillon plays someone who (like Courtès) abandoned a very successful career in photography in pursuit of his financially perilous dream of being a serious writer. We get a single shot early on of all his cameras on a shelf: he presumably does not sell any to alleviate his financial difficulties but we never see or hear about these valuable objects ever again. Continue reading...

Economics

2 w. ago Etna lava, an ousted PM and Venice film festival: photos of the day – Friday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Julia Roberts says humanity ‘losing art of conversation’ in defence of new #MeToo

After the Hunt, directed by Luca Guadagnino, centres on an accusation of sexual assault at a universityJulia Roberts has defended her new #MeToo-themed film, After the Hunt, from accusations that it revives anti-feminist arguments, saying humanity was at risk of “losing the art of conversation”.The Oscar-winning actor is making her Venice film festival debut with the psychological thriller from the Italian director Luca Guadagnino. It premieres out of competition on the Lido on Friday evening. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Amal Clooney looks picture perfect as she supports sickly husband George while leaving Venice the morning after he battled serious sinus infection on Jay Kelly red carpet

Amal Clooney looked picture perfect as she supported her sickly husband George while leaving the Venice FIlm Festival on Friday morning. 

Events

2 w. ago Venice Film Festival's worst dressed stars: Naomi Watts, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern lead fashion flops on the red carpet as their statement and daring gowns fail to impress

This year's Venice Film Festival has attracted its usual array of A-listers, all dressed to the nines for the occasion. However, there were several stars who unfortunately seemed to miss the fashion mark.

Culture

2 w. ago All the best looks from Venice Film Festival 2025: Amal Clooney, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts

Whether on their water taxis or the red carpet, the stars are pulling out all the stops with their Venice style for 2025

Culture

2 w. ago George Clooney tipped for Oscars glory over ‘midlife crisis masterpiece’

Critics are hailing it as the actor’s ‘best performance ever’, while the film also earnt a 10-minute standing ovation at Venice Film festival

Events

2 w. ago Amal Clooney and Olivia Colman suffer the same fate as their pricey gowns are left soaked after hitting separate rainy red carpets in Venice and London

While Amal, 47 supported husband George, 64, at the Jay Kelly premiere amid the Venice Film Festival , back in the London Olivia, 51, walked the equally wet red carpet.

Events

2 w. ago George Clooney says he 'can't speak' after health issue forces him to axe work gigs

George Clooney was forced to pull out of press conferences and photo-calls at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week due to a 'bad' health issue

Politics

2 w. ago George Clooney's health battles in full as he pulls out of Venice Film Festival

George Clooney was forced to pull out of the Venice Film Festival earlier this week after falling ill, but the Hollywood icon has faced much more serious health battles in the past

Events