Venice Film Festival 2026 preview: Screen’s guide to the Spotlight titles

Conversation With The Sea (Pal-Neth-Saudi-Qat)

Dir. Muayad Alayan
A year after the launch of The Voice Of Hind Rajab, the ongoing traumas of Middle East region are again in focus in Venice. A Palestinian man in Jerusalem receives an order from an Israeli court demanding payment of a social security debt in the name of his son, who supposedly drowned two decades earlier. When no official records of his death are found, the father begins a journey to the truth. Palestinian filmmaker Alayan’s fourth feature received backing from the Hubert Bals Fund, Netherlands Film Commission, Red Sea Fund and Doha Film Institute. His credits include The Reports On Sarah And Saleem and A House In Jerusalem, which both played at Rotterdam.
Contact: Mad World

Furies (Braz-Leb)

Dir. Rami Kodeih
Furies is the fiction feature debut of Kodeih, a Sundance Lab and Berlinale Talents alumnus whose short films have screened in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and Clermont-Ferrand. The story follows two sisters plotting a bank heist to reclaim their own money for a life-saving surgery, after Lebanon’s banking system freezes all accounts overnight. George Clooney is an executive producer on the film, which is produced by Rodrigo Teixeira’s RT Features, also a backer on last year’s best international feature Oscar winner I’m Still Here.
Contact: Le Pacte 

Ground Floor (Hun-It)

Dir. Gabor Reisz
Reisz won Horizons’ best film award for 2023’s Explanation For Everything and is back on the Lido with his fourth feature, a tragicomedy that exposes cracks in Hungarian society. A man discovers mould on the wall behind his closet but when he asks questions, he realises the damage in his apartment is a symptom of a much wider social malaise. Leading Hungarian outfit Proton Cinema produced alongside Italy’s All At Once. Cirko Films and I Wonder Pictures handle the Hungarian and Italian releases respectively.
Contact: Films Boutique

Guria (Georgia-Switz-Lux-Bul-Turkey-Nor-Saudi)

Dir. Levan Koguashvili
This wry comedy is set in the early 1990s, not long after the fall of the Soviet Union, and follows a cash-strapped hazelnut farmer in a west Georgia village who is looking for love. The Eurimages-­backed title is produced by Kino Iberica with support from the Georgian National Film Center, as well as a host of international partners including the Hubert Bals Fund, Red Sea Fund, Film Fund Luxembourg and Turkey’s Ministry of Culture.
Contact: Olena Yershova, Kino Iberica 

Hombre Al Agua (Mex)

Dir. Gael Garcia Bernal
The Mexican multi-hyphenate returns to directing for the first time since Chicuarotes played in Cannes’ Special Screenings in 2019. He stars as a lifeguard who rescues a rich man and is pulled into his manipulative world. Esmeralda Pimentel, Debora Nascimento and Jorge Salinas also star in the feature from Bernal and Diego Luna’s La Corriente del Golfo and fellow producers Fernanda de la Peza and Stacy Perskie.
Contact: The Pool Films

I Matter (Rom-Ger-Belg)

Dir. Alina Serban
Actress and activist Serban’s debut feature as a director is developed from her earlier shorts that explored the lives of Roma people and the discrimination they face. I Matter follows a young Roma girl — soon to leave the foster home where she grew up — whose mother is in prison. Serban has won awards for her acting in films Alone At My Wedding and Gipsy Queen. I Matter was made through Romania’s microFILM and has an impressive lineup of European co-producers including Frakas in Belgium, Benelux outfit Lemming and Germany’s 2Pilots Filmproduction.
Contact: Pluto Film

Serpenti (It)

Dir. Roberto De Paolis Maino
De Paolis Maino’s third film, after Pure Hearts (Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes 2017) and Princess (Venice Horizons, 2022), is billed as a Kafka­esque tragicomedy about a wife killer who is not taken seriously by police when he tries to confess. Serpenti is co-produced by Paco Cine­matografica and cross-platform media company Be Water, and is released in Italy by I Wonder Pictures. The film is co-scripted by the reliably edgy D’Innocenzo brothers, who picked up a screenplay Silver Bear at Berlin in 2020 for Bad Tales.
Contact: Elle Driver

Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing (Japan-US-Den-UK)

Dir. Erik Shirai
This documentary goes behind the scenes of sumo wrestling, a world usually closed off to outsiders, tracking participants over the course of a year. Shirai is known for directing 2015’s The Birth Of Saké, following the daily life of distillers at Yoshida Brewery, and for his cinematography on series such as Tokyo Vice and Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Production companies include the UK’s Rise Films, Japan’s Generation 11, Denmark’s Real Lava and US outfit ESPN Films, which holds world rights.
Contact: Simone Raineri, The Walt Disney Company 

Words by: Ben Dalton, Tim Dams, Elaine Guerini, Jeremy Kay, Rebecca Leffler, Geoffrey Macnab, Lee Marshall, Thea Middleton, David Opie, Michael Rosser, Matt Schley, Mona Tabbara, Silvia Wong

• The lowdown on all the Venice Film Festival 2026 titles