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Some of the biggest stars at this year’s Venice Film Festival won’t be the famous faces walking the red carpet, but the wildly high-profile subjects of documentaries that range from intoxicating to grippingly urgent.
From Oscar winner Alex Gibney‘s 4-hour dissection of Elon Musk and Disney’s intimate Oasis reunion movie to NAZA, the politically charged documentary about “Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” and the ICE documentary They’re Here from Laura Poitras (another Oscar winner) — many of this year’s must-see movies on the Lido are clearly nonfiction. And, arguably, the biggest star who may or may not walk Venice’s red carpet — aside from Noel and Liam Gallagher — will likely do so on behalf of a documentary. Noted architecture superfan Brad Pitt recently became an executive producer of Wim Wenders’ 14-year-in-the-making documentary portrait of Peter Zumthor, the Swiss visionary behind the sprawling new Los Angeles County Museum of Art — another gem among Venice’s stacked 2026 documentary lineup.
“It’s a phenomenal year for docs at Venice, and I think this will be one of the big stories of this edition,” says Emilie Spiegel, who co-heads Cinetic Marketing, a prestige publicity agency that represents an outsized swath of every fall’s awards favorites. “To have the oldest festival in the world so clearly state that documentary is cinema, and that some of the most exciting work is happening there, is really significant. Amid budget contractions and studio consolidation, I also think it’s optimistic and savvy of Venice to be championing nonfiction right now.”
For breadth, depth, diversity and pedigree, Venice has clearly emerged as the preeminent platform for high-end nonfiction filmmaking among the world’s top festivals. While Cannes has been far more sporadic in its support of the form, and Berlin tends to offer quantity at the expense of quality, Venice has consistently brought the bangers — and the 2026 selection looks to be among its best yet.
Two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple is back with Union Town, a cinéma vérité portrait of New York delivery workers taking on some of the world’s most powerful corporations; Free Solo Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi return to extreme sporting terrain with Everest: The Other Side, about a pair of mountaineers’ audacious attempt to climb and ski the north face of the world’s tallest mountain; The Truffle Hunters duo Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw decamp to French wine country for an infectiously romantic and richly informative romp in Burgundy; and Takashi Miike, after more than 100 films and three decades spent gleefully jumping around genres, makes his first documentary with Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki, filmed over more than three years with rare access to the inner sanctum of Japan’s traditional Kabuki theater world.
Elsewhere, Julia Loktev follows her epic portrait of independent Russian journalists with My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, another nearly six-hour immersion; Russell Crowe turns the camera on himself and his globe-trotting rock band for what Venice chief Alberto Barbera has called the star’s “most personal” film. And that’s before factoring in Erik Shirai’s Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing, which promises rare access inside another of Japan’s most famously guarded traditions; Robert Greene’s Too Much Sugar, a strikingly original doc about fatherhood and masculinity; or Mariano Llinás’ three-part, more-than-five-hour biography of Jorge Luis Borges.
The festival has even built its embrace of docs more firmly into its structure this year, with a new dedicated “Film on Films” strand, where Luca Guadagnino’s gargantuan, seven-hour-plus meditation on the great Bernardo Bertolucci sits alongside Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Zizek’s The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, a tribute to the cult of Seijun Suzuki, and more.
Documentary filmmaking’s presence at Venice stretches back to the festival’s very first edition in 1932, when Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken’s 12-minute Dutch avant-garde documentary Rain (or Regen) screened on the closing night of the inaugural edition. But it wasn’t until the Barbera era that nonfiction filmmaking would vie for — and swiftly win — the festival’s signature honor. Shortly after taking the reins as artistic director of the festival for the second time in 2012, Barbera put two documentaries in the festival’s main competition for the first time in 2013 — Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known and Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA — and the latter promptly won the Golden Lion. The space and prominence Barbera has accorded to nonfiction has only grown in the years since.
“Perhaps this is not the result of a deliberate strategic choice, but rather the consequence of the fact that, year after year, we receive a growing number of submissions in the documentary genre, whose significance — both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of its ability to offer a representation of and contribute to our understanding of the major issues of our time — is perhaps unprecedented,” Barbera explains. “My impression is that the financial resources available for making documentaries have increased, as a result of growing demand from streaming platforms but also increased interest from the public, which is now much more willing to watch nonfiction films of good quality.”
In docs as well as fictional filmmaking, Venice has also staked out a commendably independent-minded stance over recent years when it comes to films that tackle conflict and fraught social issues.
“I believe Venice is one of the very few international cultural platforms that has the ability to invite filmmakers with very different — or even opposite — political positions and cultural points of view, and put their work in conversation,” says Ukrainian director and producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who is known for his work with Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev and last year directed and premiered the searingly personal documentary Notes from a True Criminal in Venice. Rodnyansky notes the sober-mindedness Venice has shown in screening bold Ukrainian and Palestinian films — such as The Voice of Hind Rajab in 2025 and the Gaza docs NAZA and Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama this year — as well as works by freethinking Russian and Israeli filmmakers, without succumbing to the blanket bans that some have called for on films and filmmakers from those countries. “Of course, state propaganda should have no place, but real independent-minded filmmaking should be welcomed wherever it comes from,” he says.
Rodnyansky is producer of Israeli documentarian Amos Gitai’s The Road to Jericho, a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho that visits the country’s threatened Bedouin community while reflecting on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The film will premiere in Venice’s out-of-competition nonfiction section. “As you understand, it’s not an easy time for Israeli filmmakers right now. They’re having a very hard time getting their movies accepted by the major festivals, regardless of what they might believe,” Rodnyansky says.
“These are turbulent times, and a festival should try to reflect the polarization of the societies we observe and continue the conversation using artistic means,” he adds. “It’s a very simple mission, and I think Barbera inherited that legacy and has continued to enrich it in a brilliant way.”
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