Between TV series and experimental works, the festival also looks to the past by presenting a vintage Almodóvar and paying tribute to Kim Novak. Amanda Seyfried, The Rock, and Emily Blunt are expected on the red carpet
The first week of the Venice International Film Festival concluded with international stars, films that engaged audiences and industry professionals, parties, and events. While early predictions take shape, the Festival continues with new arrivals.
Golden Lion to Kim Novak, Hitchcock icon
Today Kim Novak will walk the red carpet at the Palazzo del Cinema to receive the second Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded this year.
Marilyn Pauline Novak (her name was changed to avoid confusion with Monroe), born in 1933, made Hollywood cinema history between the mid-1950s and late 1960s starring in films such as Picnic by Joshua Logan in 1955, Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958, Bell Book and Candle by Richard Quine in 1958, and Kiss Me, Stupid by Billy Wilder in 1964.
Nevertheless, she is also remembered for consistently going against the rules of the Hollywood system. Festival director Alberto Barbera describes her as an “independent and nonconformist” woman who “created her own production company and went on strike to renegotiate a salary much lower than that of her male partners“.
The actress, in accepting the award proposal, stated: “I am deeply moved to receive the prestigious Golden Lion award from such a respected film festival. To be recognized for the body of my work at this time in my life is a dream come true. I will treasure every moment spent in Venice. It will fill my heart with joy“.
Out of competition, at the end of the awards ceremony, the documentary Kim Novak’s Vertigo by Alexandre O. Philippe will also be screened, an intimate portrait of a diva who left everything behind to live by her own rules in the wake of one of the most celebrated roles she ever played, Judy/Madeleine in Vertigo.
The competition films of the sixth day
The Testament of Ann Lee is the second film directed by Norwegian director and screenwriter Mona Fastvold. Her first work, The World to Come, was also presented in competition in Venice. In fact, her connection with the Venice festival is much closer, having co-written all the films of her husband Brady Corbet, many of which were awarded at the Lido, and receiving an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of The Brutalist, presented in Venice last year and awarded the Silver Lion.
Like the previous film, The Testament of Ann Lee is also a period film, inspired by the life of Ann Lee, a preacher first in Great Britain and then in the United States, founder of the Shakers, a radical religious movement born at the end of the 18th century.
The film stars Amanda Seyfried (Ann Lee), Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, and Tim Blake Nelson.
The second competition film of the day is The Smashing Machine by Benny Safdie, the story of wrestler Mark Kerr, a legend of mixed martial arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“His strength also manifested outside the ring, because he had a unique ability to express emotions” states the young director. The champion is played by Dwayne Johnson, also known by the pseudonym The Rock, who reunites with British actress Emily Blunt, after the success of the Disney+ film Jungle Cruise.
Marco Bellocchio recounts the drama of Enzo Tortora
1982: television host Enzo Tortora is at the height of success. He hosts Portobello and reaches 28 million viewers in prime time. The entire country hums the show’s theme song and waits to see if a contestant will manage to make the parrot, the show’s guest of honor, speak. When an informant from the Nuova Camorra Organizzata names him and on June 17, 1983, the carabinieri knock on his hotel room door, Tortora thinks it’s a mistake, but it’s only the beginning of an odyssey that will drag him from the peak to the abyss.
After recounting the drama of Aldo Moro, director Marco Bellocchio in the TV series Portobello (HBO/RAI Fiction) recounts one of the most sensational Italian judicial errors. The first two episodes are presented out of competition in Venice today.
Director Hagai Levi (Scenes from a Marriage) also tackles a TV series, Etty with Julia Windischbauer and Sebastian Koch, of which the first three episodes are presented.
The series, which tells the story of a Jewish woman during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, is based on the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum.
The return of Matador, by Pedro Almodóvar
“Today we will speak of the art of killing the bull. It is not enough to face it well, one must kill it well, because to kill it badly is an infamy…” Thus begins one of Pedro Almodóvar‘s early films, Matador from 1986, with a close and intense close-up of a young and sensual Antonio Banderas, twenty-six at the time.
The fifth feature film by the Madrid-born director, it is part of the filmography that precedes the great international success of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was presented in competition in Venice in 1988.
The film is perhaps one of the most abstract in Almodóvar’s early production. It addresses the theme of death, in particular, as the supreme act of freedom, in the face of the inevitable decay of beauty and passion, imposed by social conventions.
The cinematography by Ángel Luis Fernández is characterized by “chromatic excesses” that the director had suggested, asking to be inspired by other works marked by the passion-death binomial. Those reds and blacks will shine again on the big screen, thanks to the restoration carried out by Video Mercury Films. In the film, in addition to Banderas, Assumpta Serna, Nacho Martínez, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura (the only one from the cast in Venice this year), and Eusebio Poncela.
The other two films of the day for Venice Classics are Kagi (The Key) by Japanese director Kon Ichikawa from 1959 and the experimental film on the visual and television representation of the Holocaust Holofiction by Michal Kosakowski.
All the films from the other sections
Out of competition Orfeo by Virgilio Villoresi with Luca Vergoni, Giulia Maenza, Aomi Muyock, Vinicio Marchioni. Inspired by Poema a fumetti by Dino Buzzati, it is a work that merges different forms of language, between artisanal animation, experimental cinema, and optical techniques, in a symbolic and sensory narrative.
Also out of competition, the three short films Boomerang Atomic by Rachid Bouchareb, How to shoot a ghost by Charlie Kaufman, and Goffredo felicissimo? by Franco Maresco.
Two films in competition in the Horizons section: Songs of Forgotten Trees by Anuparna Roy, a female drama set in present-day Mumbai, and Harà Watan (Lost land) by Akio Fujimoto, a dangerous journey of two children from the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh to Malaysia.
For Venice Spotlight, À bras-le-corps (Silent Rebellion) by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo will be presented, the story of a woman’s determination after becoming pregnant following a rape.
Venice Days presents the Iranian film Past Future Continuous by Morteza Ahmadvand and Firouzeh Khosrovani and Memory of Princess Mumbi by Damien Hauser.
For the International Critics’ Week, the short film Sante (Saints) by Valeria Gaudieri and the feature film Roqia by Yanis Koussim will be presented.
Finally, a Special Event will be the screening in Sala Giardino, at 7 PM, of (Im)perfetta, the short film by Francesca Michielin and Valeria Solarino, on identity and insecurities. The project is aimed especially at young people, is produced by One More Pictures with Rai Cinema, and will be made available in the RaiPlay catalog on the same day.
To purchase film tickets: labiennale.org
Stay up to date with the festival with our Caffè and all updates in the podcast Veneziacinema in pillole free on Spotify.
Article and cover by Pietro Gallina (VeneziaCinema).
Photos by Rossana Viola during the red carpet on August 31, 2025, at the Venice Film Festival (excluding the portrait of Kim Novak provided by La Biennale di Venezia).
