Overview
- Werner Herzog received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the opening ceremony, with Francis Ford Coppola delivering the tribute.
- Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia opened the 82nd edition, which runs through September 6 on the Lido.
- Pro‑Palestinian activists demonstrated outside the festival palace, and an open letter with roughly 1,500 signatories urges the exclusion of Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler, with a larger protest planned for Saturday.
- Festival director Alberto Barbera said the event will not rescind invitations on political grounds; separate media reports suggest Gadot and Butler may not attend, which has not been officially confirmed.
- Twenty‑one films compete for the Golden Lion, including Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin and Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, while Julia Roberts makes her Venice debut in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt out of competition and Herzog screens Ghost Elephants outside the contest.