VENICE – The Venice Film Festival kicks off on the sun-splashed Lido with a bang on Sept 2, with the glamorous cinema showcase handing George Clooney a lifetime achievement award on its opening night.

The charismatic 65-year-old – a frequent red carpet guest at the world’s oldest film festival – will provide a shot of A-list adrenaline despite Hollywood studios mostly staying away in 2026.

But while the festival may lack mass-market blockbusters, there is no shortage of larger-than-life subjects, with films about Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and the volatile Gallagher brothers from the Britpop band Oasis on the calendar.

Running through Sept 12, the festival offers a strong lineup of independent films, including the main competition’s only documentary – Naza, about the Israeli forces’ killing of civilians in Gaza, from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The directors won an Oscar for 2024‘s No Other Land, which documented Israel’s displacement of a Palestinian community in the West Bank.

Opening the festival on Sept 2 is Ink, about the ruthless rise of Rupert Murdoch to the top of the British media, from Trainspotting director Danny Boyle.

Wild Horse Nine, from the director of In Bruges, Martin McDonagh, sees John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as eccentric CIA agents, while Florian Zeller’s psychological thriller Bunker features real-life Spanish power couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Ilya Krzhanovsky’s DAU, a multi-year film project about Soviet physicists, has drawn criticism from Ukraine’s government, which said it was “linked to the Russian state and its influence networks”.

Krzhanovsky issued a detailed rebuttal saying Ukraine was making “factually incorrect assertions” and pointing out that he had renounced his Russian citizenship in protest at the war with Ukraine.

“DAU is not an instrument of Russian state cultural policy. It is an artistic statement about the nature of ...