Danny Boyle's Ink opens Venice. Since 2016, no opening film won the top prize.
Danny Boyle's Ink, with Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch, opened the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 2 September and is in the main competition.
What happened
La Biennale di Venezia confirms Danny Boyle’s Ink as the opening film, in a world premiere in competition, of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, screening on Wednesday in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema after the opening ceremony.
Ink is written by James Graham from his own stage play. It tells how Rupert Murdoch bought The Sun newspaper in 1969 and put Larry Lamb in charge as editor. Jack O’Connell plays Lamb, Guy Pearce plays Murdoch and Claire Foy plays Jules Davies.
StudioCanal paid for the film and will release it in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and other countries. The festival runs until .
The festival’s director, Alberto Barbera, announced the films in July. The competition includes Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, Florian Zeller’s Bunker and Nanni Moretti’s first Venice film since 1989. Only one film in the competition is by a woman director. Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary on Elon Musk is shown outside the competition.
The jury names the winners on , at the closing ceremony. The prizes run from the Golden Lion, the top award, down to the Volpi Cups for acting and the Marcello Mastroianni Award. The Biennale publishes them the same evening, as it did on . Ink is shown before the jury has seen any of the films it competes with.
Sources: La Biennale di Venezia
The Pattern
We looked at every Venice festival from 2016 to 2025 where the opening film was in the main competition. Eight festivals fit. In 2020 and 2024 the opening film was not in the competition, so they are left out. For each of the eight, we checked whether the jury named the opening film in its official awards on the last night, from the Golden Lion down to the acting prizes.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History points to an acting prize at most. Three of the eight opening films won an award, and each time it was a Volpi Cup for the lead actor or actress. Ink is built around big single roles, Guy Pearce as Murdoch and Jack O’Connell as Lamb, the kind of part acting juries have rewarded before. Still, five of the eight opening films won nothing, and Ink is shown before the jury can compare it with anything.
The Golden Lion is a harder question. None of the eight opening films won it. The opening slot is chosen months ahead for its red-carpet value, and a film seen on the first night competes with ten days of newer films. Ink is an English-language film about a British newspaper, in a field with Moretti, McDonagh and Herzog, and its subject is an owner the European press has written about for fifty years.
The reading would fail if the jury sees Ink as a serious film about how newspapers shape public opinion, and less as a drama about an old newspaper.
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