Claire Denis and Mona Fastvold headline Miu Miu Women’s Tales

Claire Denis, one of contemporary cinema’s leading lights, director of Chocolat, Beau Travail, High Life, and more recently The Fence, and Mona Fastvold, the Norwegian writer and director who helmed The World to Come and the recent The Testament of Ann Lee, the historical musical starring Amanda Seyfried – as well as screenwriter of all of Brady Corbet’s films, including The Brutalist, which earned her an Academy Award nomination – are the filmmakers on the 2026 program for Miu Miu Women’s Tales. Their shorts will be screened at Giornate degli Autori on Saturday, September 5th, at 4:30pm, in the Sala Perla at the Palazzo del Casinò, before the competition title Les Indes by Pauline Julier and Nicolas Chapoulier.

Avec Kim by Claire Denis (France, 2026, 12’) follows a young woman mechanic through the streets of Paris, on a drive set to music and all about motion. At the wheel of a rather massive car from the Eighties, the woman crosses the city, has encounters with people and little slices of daily life, and finally reunites with a mysterious lady traveler from the far north. Starring Suzanne Lindon and Kim Gordon.

Discipline by Mona Fastvold (United States, 2026, 14’) is set in a stately boarding school in northern Italy, cloaked in a dawn fog. In a cold, apparently uninhabited dormitory, life-size female dolls and their white-masked puppeteers get down to their daily routine of getting dressed. The camera follows the Principal Dress, across playtime, soup for lunch, Headmistress inspection, culminating in an ecstatic scene of rupture, rapture and liberating transformation. A girl is born. In the cast: Amanda Seyfried.

Miu Miu Women’s Tales got its start in 2011, and after over 16 years and 32 episodes, it is considered the most acclaimed series of short films created for a showcase and directed by leading women filmmakers. Each year, Miu Miu, Creative Partner of Giornate degli Autori, entrusts two women directors with crafting a short film each, in which they bring fascinating, significant worlds to the screen, peopled with uniquely imaginative visions of women today. The shorts are screened in the Sala Perla at the Palazzo del Casinò in Venice during the Venice Film Festival, with the cast and directors in attendance.

Following the screening, over the next two days the Miu Miu Women’s Tales program continues with three events held in the Veneto Region /Veneto Film Commission Space at the Hotel Excelsior and moderated by the British writer and curator Lou Stoppard:

Sunday, September 6th at 10am
Bodies and Objects: Filmmaking beyond Dialogue
Featuring Claire Denis, Mona Fastvold, Kim Gordon, Suzanne Lindon, and Amanda Seyfried

Sunday, September 6th at 3pm
Reimaginations: Actors Offering Fresh Takes on Familiar Female Characters
Featuring Zoey Deutch and Antonia Gentry

Monday, September 7th at 11am
Other Realms: Acting Across Space, Time and Fantasy
Featuring Thuso Mbedu and Cailee Spaeny

Our guest speakers this year join an impressive roster of over a hundred international film personalities who have shared their own craft – from a woman’s point of view – with Venice Film Festival audiences. They include: Kate Bosworth, Emma Corrin, Lena Dunham, Nathalie Emmanuel, Dakota Fanning, Molly Gordon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Vanessa Kirby, Brigitte Lacombe, Zosia Mamet, Kate Mara, Alice Rohrwacher, Chloë Sevigny, Carla Simón, Cailee Spaeny, Hailee Steinfeld, Juno Temple, Tessa Thompson, and Agnes Varda.