Overview

• The closing ceremony is scheduled for 1700 GMT, when the Payne-led jury unveils the Golden Lion and other prizes.
• Thousands rallied near the festival gates over the Gaza war, and an open letter urging organizers to denounce Israel’s offensive drew roughly 2,000 industry signatures.
• Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab received a 22–23 minute standing ovation, and the director said producers including Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix were later targeted with mass hate messages online.
• Awards-season attention centers on competition titles such as Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, with critics highlighting several as potential Oscar contenders.
• Critical response was uneven, with starry entries like Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly underwhelming, even as Netflix-backed premieres and major auteurs drew sustained applause.