Venice film festival trains lens on media power

The Venice Film Festival's 2026 competition programme reflects a familiar preoccupation in world cinema: the outsized power of media moguls and the men who wield it. Danny Boyle will premiere a drama centred on the acquisition of the Sun newspaper, while a four-hour documentary about Elon Musk will also compete, according to the Guardian. The festival's opening days showcase new work from Martin McDonagh and Werner Herzog alongside these high-profile examinations of influence and transformation in media and technology.

The festival's lineup signals the continued dominance of male filmmakers in Venice's main competition. The Guardian noted that only one female director has a film in the competition strand, a disparity that underscores persistent gender imbalance at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals. The thematic focus on media power—from print journalism to digital platforms—reflects broader international anxieties about ownership, control and the reach of individual actors in shaping public discourse.

The 2026 festival takes place against a backdrop of ongoing tensions over cultural funding and geopolitical divisions. The Venice Biennale, the city's major visual arts exhibition, has already become a flashpoint after European authorities withdrew funding over Russia's participation, as the New York Times reported. The film festival's emphasis on scrutinizing power structures and the men who exercise them arrives in a moment when European institutions are reassessing their relationships with political and economic influence.

Venice's cultural calendar has become a battleground for broader questions about money, access and representation. The film festival's programming choices—elevating narratives about Murdoch and Musk to competition status—suggest that cinema's preoccupation with media moguls reflects genuine public concern about their reach. Yet the gender gap in competition reflects cinema's own structural problems: the stories about power are being told overwhelmingly by men, even as the festival stages those narratives for international audiences.

For Italy's cultural economy, Venice remains a critical site where international cinema and art worlds converge. The festival's drawing power attracts global press attention and festival circuits that influence distribution and prestige across Europe and beyond. The prominence of examinations of media power in this year's competition suggests that Venice continues to function as a space where world cinema addresses urgent contemporary anxieties—though the absence of female voices in competition raises questions about whose perspectives are centred in those conversations.