“Stay with me!”

You’ll excuse us if the first line of this press kit is a little different than usual. All those who knew Giorgio Gosetti well recall that towards the end of the festival he used to hurl an imperative at his staff: “Stay with me!” A half-serious, half-joking exhortation – which was just his style – to hold on, remain united and not let their guard down even when the worst seems to be over, since that’s when more mistakes get made.

For the Giornate degli Autori family, the loss of Giorgio, which came suddenly last March, was the most difficult challenge they have ever had, as it would be for an arch, say, suddenly deprived of its keystone. Giorgio founded this section in the far-off year 2004, and for twenty-three years, without interruption, he was its guiding spirit, the lifeblood of the organization, motivating and uniting the professionals that turned it into a festival known and respected the world over.

And it’s just because we are well aware of everything Giorgio did for Giornate degli Autori that his “Stay with me!” becomes almost a moral imperative in this strange new dimension without him: exhorting us us to keep the dream going in continuity with all we have achieved up to now, and renew Giornate’s calling as an independent section of Venice devoted to exploration, debate and the freedom of the cinematic gaze; a section that fosters a dialogue between films from far-off lands, emerging and solidly established filmmakers alike, diverse genres, and fresh new ways of storytelling.

“There are violent storms that suddenly sweep over the Lagoon and rip open rooftops, fell trees, flood the banks and leave deep scars on the shores,” declares Francesco Ranieri Martinotti, president of the cultural association Giornate degli Autori. “What befell the Giornate degli Autori community on March 6th of this year, with the loss of Giorgio Gosetti, was one of these storms. As we were putting together our 23rd edition, he was on our mind constantly, and that served as our compass, so we wouldn’t stray off course and could continue his work with the same determination, wisdom, and grace. We were lucky to be able to count on the cohesion of our team, the sense of responsibility of all members of the Giornate degli Autori association, and the wealth of experience of our honorary president, Roberto Barzanti. We think we are back on our feet now, and we are sure, thanks to Giaia Furrer, our Artistic Director who apprenticed at the school of Giorgio Gosetti, that the edition we are dedicating him will be his edition, above all.”

“This edition carries with it a deep void and a deep gratitude,” declares Artistic Director Gaia Furrer. “We owe to Giorgio the very idea for this free arena we inhabit, along with his faith in the new directions of cinema and his stubborn, loving determination to build and consolidate, year after year, a community of men and women filmmakers and audiences. This year, Giornate springs from the desire to honor this legacy by continuing to do what Giorgio taught us: seek out, discover, go wrong, become passionate about, and believe in cinema and in those who make it happen.”

The 23rd edition of Giornate degli Autori, promoted by ANAC and 100autori, takes place during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival from September 2nd to September 12th, 2026, and is made possible by the crucial collaboration with the Venice Biennale and the support of the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual (DGCA) and SIAE, which, as well as assigning the Andrea Purgatori Lifetime Achievement Award for Creative Talent, for the first time is Main Sponsor of the event, as well as promoter of various shared initiatives that will continue after Venice has concluded. Once again, in 2026 the splendid collaboration with Miu Miu continues, in the form of the showcase Miu Miu Women’s Tales, while a new partnership with Laser Film has just begun. At Giornate’s side this year, a host of historic partners, each connected with specific projects, and in a special year like this, we would like to thank them all: Institutional Partners Europa Cinemas, IULM, the Veneto Region, Veneto Film Commission, and Writers Guild Italia; Media Partners Cinecittà News, Cineuropa, FRED, Cinematografo, Taxi Drivers, and MYmovies; and Technical Partners Sub-Ti, Frame, L’eco della stampa, Infinity Road Pictures, and L’image.

A special thanks to the members of the Giornate degli Autori Association as well, and its Board of Directors, who accompany the editorial policy of our section with passion and generosity; to our splendid staff that equally passionately and with a spirit of sacrifice make this unique festival possible; to the students coming from Bari, Rome, Bologna, Milan, and Venice who share the work with us, and the experience of the Venice Film Festival: and the AFIC, of which Giornate is a founding member.

Our lineup this year draws on 1,036 submissions from 114 countries and features 25 world premieres, of which 13 are Italian and 14 directed by women; 10 films in competition, 1 closing film out of competition, 5 special events, and the showcase of 9 titles in Venetian Nights, co-organized with Isola Edipo.

Our 2026 roster of films bears out Giornate’s international calling, with a wide range of territories, generations, and national film traditions amply represented, from Australia to Switzerland, from Serbia to Mexico, and from Argentina to Nigeria, which joins the Giornate competition lineup for the first time, further aumenting the plurality of perspectives that has always been a hallmark of our section. The only Italian title in competition is Balcanica by Nicola Sorcinelli.

Selecting the best film in competition to win the GdA Director’s Award, with a cash prize of €20,000 to be split between the director and international distributor, will be an entirely female jury made up of the Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, the Italian director and editor Sara Fgaier, and Hania Mroué, director of Metropolis, the historic arthouse cinema in Beirut and a beacon for Lebanese film culture. As always, it will be the audiences in the Sala Perla to bestow Audience Award on a film in the official selection, while the Europa Cinemas jury will choose the winner of the Label from among the European films at Giornate degli Autori.

The 2026 edition marks the return of two women filmmakers particularly tied to the history of Giornate. Lili Horvát, in competition back in 2020 with her Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, has directed the opening film on the lineup this year, My Notes on Mars, her first English-language film, starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend. Roberta Torre, after the success of Le favolose (2022), is back on the Lido with Scarpe rotte, starring Barbara Ronchi, which opens the contemporary Italian cinema program, Venetian Nights.

Alongside new talent, filmmakers with time-honored international reputations get a showing as well, like Robert Guédiguian and his A Woman Today, further proof of one of Giornate degli Autori’s particular strengths: creating a dialogue between new filmmakers just starting out and others who continue to reinvent themselves over time.

The profusion of offerings this year also emerges from the variety of narrative forms on display: sentimental science fiction, experimental documentaries, history films, family melodramas, anti-hero westerns, musical comedies and other works that freely cross the borders between documentary film and fiction, autobiography and invention. It’s a patchwork of genres that reflects the vibrancy of contemporary cinema and its ability to evolve along with the world itself.

In addition, this year Giornate pays homage to three major female figures in 20th-century Italian culture: Carla Lonzi, major exponent of Italian feminism; Natalia Ginzburg, one of the key authors of the last century; and Fernanda Wittgens, the first woman to direct the Brera Museum. Three distinct personalities united by their ability to transform their own times through ideas, culture, and action.

Two equally impressive women are the two filmmakers behind the short films on the Miu Miu Women’s Tales program this year, hosted in the Sala Perla: Claire Denis and Mona Fastvold. Giornate’s partnering with Miu Miu, now in its fifteenth year, gives rise, as per tradition, to the Conversations held in the Veneto Region / Veneto Film Commission Space, which see talented young auteurs of world renown compare notes on the theme of women’s creativity in contemporary cinema.

And it is again an international artist who is behind the official poster of the 23rd edition of Giornate degli Autori, which celebrates the marvel of the ordinary this year and is the brainchild of Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi, whose works have been shown in galleries the world over, such as the Fondation Cartier and Fondazione Sozzani in Paris, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, and the branches of the Fotografiska Museum in Stockhom, Tallin, Berlin, and Shanghai.

The 2026 official selection brings to Venice a plethora of leading lights active in Italian and global cinema today, including: Mia Wasikowska, Matilda De Angelis, Luigi Lo Cascio, Sara Drago, Raphaël Thiéry, Giorgio Colangeli, Francesca Archibugi, Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan, Laura Citarella, Karin Viard, and Catherine Deneuve, the last two of whom star in the closing film, A Man’s Skin, directed by Léa Domenach.

More than ever this year, the Casa degli Autori and the Sala Laguna (via Pietro Buratti, 1) will be the nerve centers of our event: places where films, filmmakers, audiences, and film professionals come together and prove once again that Giornate is not just a film showcase, but also a community that embraces dialogue and debate.

After its enthusiastic reception in recent editions, #confronti is back: the space for screenings and discussions featuring a rich array of provocative ideas, reflections, stories and accounts of Italy today, in a packed daily program co-organized with the filmmakers’ associations, SIAE, and Isola Edipo. Four films will accompany the conversations on current events: Fame d’aria by Giuseppe Bonito, I Nisidiani by Riccardo Brun, Mare mosso by Roberto Cimpanelli, and Waiting for Ken Loach by Simone Amendola.

Many more initiatives are still being mapped out. Definitely on the 2026 program: the fourth edition of the Declaration of Filmmakers, a discussion between national and international film personalities about the prospects for the audiovisual industry in the framework of the current sociopolitical landscape; an event built around soundtracks, arranged by ACMF – Associazione Compositori Musica per Film and presided over by Pivio, with the composers of the scores for the films at Giornate 2026 in attendance; and a masterclass curated by Luca Siano, in collaboration with Ferrara La Città del Cinema and the Archivio Sandro Simeoni, devoted to the extraordinary career of painter, illustrator, and poster artist Carlantonio Longi. Then there’s the second edition of Africa Chiama, a conference on Italian and African projects offering academic training in audiovisual technologies; a brand new event debating gender equality in support of filmmakers of both sexes; the traditional appointment with students from the Cinema, Storia & Società: dentro l’immagine project that continues the initiative “100+1: cento film e un Paese, l’Italia”, launched in 2006 at Giornate degli Autori together with the Ente dello Spettacolo e Cinematografo and focusing on artists who are able to negotiate a variety of different visual genres.

As for Giornate’s collaboration with Isola Edipo, three events are firmly on the program. The first is NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: The role of sources in the cinematic construction of individual and collective narratives, a discussion space promoted by Isola Edipo and Giornate degli Autori in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, devoted to the interplay between cinema and contemporary times, which this year recruits the Lebanese filmmaker Mohamad Abdouni, the Italian director Costanza Quatriglio, and the Franco-Senegalese director Alain Gomis. The second event is the first stop on the tour of Milano Industry Days – MID by Milano Film Network 2026, presenting in Venice, for the fifth year in a row, Italian film projects developed at the 11th edition of the workshop IN PROGRESS MFN 2026. Lastly, the sixth edition of Ad occhi aperti, an event dedicated to the need for an integrated program of study in Italian secondary schools, by means of a course on cinema and the implementation of the Ministry of Culture and the DGCA’s National Plan for Cinema and Images in Secondary Schools.

And education is also the focus of three other events held in the Sala Laguna, with the Blow-up Academy in Ferrara, and the CSC – National Film School and the Gian Maria Volonté Film School in Rome. This is also the first time Giornate degli Autori is partnering with the new space at the Venice Film Festival devoted to young audiences, Casa Cinema Giovani, promoted by ANEC, ACEC, and the Ministry of Sport and Youth.

Another first for Giornate degli Autori in 2026 is its collaboration with Venezia CULT – a project designed and curated Aka Lab and developed in a partnership with COMICON – which will bring to the Sala Laguna two very special guests gearing up to meet Giornate audiences in person: the Italian cartoonist Leo Ortolani, creator of Rat-Man, and the British cartoonist and illustrator Dave McKean, best known for the graphic novel Batman Arkham Asylum and his iconic covers for Sandman by Neil Gaiman. An exhibition of McKean’s works, “Pictures that dream”, produced by COMICON, will be on show at the venue La Villa (Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, 56), once again this year the hub of the B2B activities on the Lido, partnering with Unifrance.

And for the first time, the venue at the Casa degli Autori will have a dedicated soundtrack, curated by Four Flies Records and featuring a selection of songs from the Golden Age of Italian cinema.

Last but not least, there are several partnerships dear to Giornate degli Autori on the agenda, starting with Bookciak, Azione!, with a debate titled “Il tempo passa parola, riflessione a più voci su donne, cinema, diritti e intelligenza (speriamo non artificiale)”, featuring special guest Luciana Castellina and followed by the screening of the bookciak winners for 2026 and, the next morning, the picnic awards ceremony at La Villa. Then there’s the 12th edition of Laguna Sud. Il cinema fuori dal Palazzo, organized by ZaLab, with whom Giornate degli Autori is launching – thanks to the support of the Otto per Mille of the Italian Buddhist Institute Soka Gakkai – a Laguna Film Lab – Residenza Artistica Giorgio Gosetti, a new artist’s residency which will be developed over the course of an entire year, leading to the creation of an anthology film. Three more Giornate partners are Emergency, whom Giornate joins in saying NO to war; MYmovies, whose Sala Virtuale will once again host a selection of Giornate titles in tandem with the screenings on the Lido, whch can be viewed by a limited audience and for a short window of time, as part of the subscription to MYmoviesONE; and IULM, which for the third year in a row will host at the Casa degli Autori a livestream on IULM Play of “Finestra sul Lido”, a program curated by IULM students with interviews and talks, joining us from the studios in Milan.

As you can see from this first taste of our program, Giornate degli Autori is staying in the game, and it’s back for more. Thanks for coming along for the ride with us.

This edition is dedicated to Giorgio Gosetti.
“I like to think that Giornate degli Autori is the moment when, thanks to cinema, it’s people who take back center-stage, with their stories, their dreams, the pain of their traumatic experiences, and their hope in a better world. This is the legacy handed down to us by our guiding spirits – Citto Maselli, Emidio Greco, and Andrea Purgatori – and it is under their aegis that we, as our honorary president Roberto Barzanti reminds us, wish to bring ‘a different idea of a festival’ into being.” [Giorgio Gosetti]