McDonagh’s new film, Wild Horse Nine, stars John Malkovich as an agent in 1970s Chile who feels ‘guilt and regret’ over his role in global interventions

The US’s history of intervening in democratic processes around the world deserves more attention in the light of current political developments, playwright and film-maker Martin McDonagh has said, as his Oscar-tipped film about a rueful CIA agent premieres at the Venice film festival.

“I’ve been very interested in the truth of what the CIA has been doing over the last 60 years, and the awful things they’ve done all around the world,” McDonagh said about Wild Horse Nine, his first film since his 2022 tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin. “I think maybe something that’s not talked about enough. We know what the KGB are like, but we probably don’t question the CIA’s activity as much as we ought to.”

Speaking at the opening of the Venice film festival, the actor-director addressed why the jury of which she is chair will only be shown two films made by female film-makers

Maggie Gyllenhaal said there is a “systemic problem” that explains why only two female directors are in the running for the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival this year.

“It’s harder for women to get films financed,” said the actor-director, who is heading up the jury of the world’s oldest cinema showcase this year.

Actor says the press baron’s daughter Elisabeth told him her father was pleased, ‘but he hadn’t seen the film at that point’

Rupert Murdoch is “very happy” that he’s being portrayed by Guy Pearce in a new film about the origins of British tabloid the Sun, the Australian actor has said.

Speaking at the Venice film festival ahead of the premiere of 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle’s Ink, Pearce said he had been messaging with the media tycoon’s daughter Elisabeth “and she did say ‘Dad’s very happy that you’re playing him’.”

Sergei Loznitsa likens removal of €2m grant to ‘a punishment in kindergarten’ on eve of Venice film festival

One of Ukraine’s most acclaimed film-makers has criticised the European Commission’s decision to cut off funds to the Venice Biennale over the opening of Russia’s pavilion, likening it to “a punishment in kindergarten”.

The Biennale drew heavy criticism this spring when it allowed Russia to use its pavilion for the first time since 2022, despite the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The star has long been French cinema’s favourite tousle-haired Adonis, which makes his latest performance – as a schlubby, stay-at-home dad – all the more surprising. ‘I appreciate people laughing at me,’ he says

‘Even though I’ve been working in film for over 20 years, I still have this desire to look beautiful on screen,” says Louis Garrel, on a video call from his bed inside a boat off the coast of Corsica. The French film star is lying on his stomach, occasionally kicking up his bare legs, ruffling his curls and running the nail of his thumb over his moustache. I think the person he sees on the laptop screen in front of him is me, but I am pretty certain he is flirting with his own reflection.

The attraction between the Paris-born 43-year-old and the camera tends to be reciprocal. Long of limb, tousled of hair and chiselled of nose, Garrel has spent a career on screen as French cinema’s favourite Adonis – the man film-makers turn to when they need an erotic wrecking ball to smash up bourgeois twosomes and turn them into quivering menages a trois.

Father Dionysios Tabakis says his views are those of Orthodox church, ‘nothing more, nothing less’

A Greek Orthodox priest whose home-recorded album of drone metal and religious dubstep has made him a cult figure in experimental music circles has issued a statement in which he has clarified his stance on homosexuality and the Greek radical right.

“As can be seen from my musical expression, I am in favour of unity, love, empathy and help for every needy, wronged and suffering person in life,” Father Dionysios Tabakis said in a public statement shared with the Guardian. “Whoever they are, whatever they believe, whether they are a saint or a sinner.”

Gold collection known as Treasure of Villena, worth at least €1.7m, is target of ‘very well planned’ raid

Thieves in Spain have raided the Treasure of Villena – a stunning collection of bronze age gold artefacts that has been described as the most important prehistoric trove in Europe – in the latest high-profile smash-and-grab heist on the continent.

The raid on Thursday morning of the 66 mostly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes, officials said.

It has inspired violent protests from Norway to Rome – and now it’s hitting the UK. Playwright Tiago Rodrigues explains why the far-right speech at the drama’s climax has proved so incendiary

In February, turbulent scenes inside a German theatre made headlines around the globe. During the final act of a play at Schauspielhaus theatre in Bochum, the audience first jeered and whistled at a performer in the role of a far-right politician. An orange lobbed from the auditorium narrowly missed its target; eventually, two spectators climbed on to the stage and tried to wrestle the actor off. News of the incident travelled around the world: it seemed a bizarre throwback to a world in which people were not able to tell the difference between art and real life, like 19th-century Parisians stampeding out of a cinema after watching a train hurtle towards the camera.

For the man who wrote the play, however, it was nothing unusual. “I was not surprised by the reaction,” says Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues. “I was surprised by the fact that it was so surprising for so many people.” He describes the audience’s reaction to his play Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists as “very intense”, but also “typical”.

As social media shrinks and distorts the EU’s crises, the Venice film festival is delivering politically forthright epics from directors such as Sergei Loznitsa and Alex Gibney

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Europe is in an economic crisis that, unlike the eurozone downturn at the beginning of the millennium, cannot be measured in ratings downgrades and borrowing costs. For metrics, try engagement depth and consumer trust instead.

The unedifying spectacle of the European Union’s falling out over the Ceuta crisis looks like the latest symptom of Europe’s shrinking attention economy. When more than 70,000 people crossed over from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta at the start of the month, Rome hastily reintroduced air and sea border checks with Spain for one month; Madrid retaliated with spot-checks on travellers to Italy.

EU’s smallest country has played ancient Rome, the Land of Spells and Bay of Pentos and draws more than 30 productions annually

What links the Caribbean, ancient Rome, Enid Blyton’s Land of Spells, the south of France and the Bay of Pentos from Game of Thrones? They are all places that have been portrayed in recent and forthcoming films by a sunny archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, no bigger in size than Sheffield.

Malta has over the last decade risen to become one of the most popular places in Europe for American and British film-makers to set their works in, taking a lead in what has been described as an “arms race” to lure big movie productions with tax incentives.

The Dutch creator of the controversial trilogy set to detail struggles with neurological disease in homemade documentary, after spending six years ‘as a recluse’

Tom Six, the film-maker behind schlock horror phenomenon The Human Centipede, has revealed that he has been living as “a full-blown recluse” in a darkened Amsterdam apartment for six years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In The End of Tom Six, a homemade documentary that the Dutch director said would be his final film, he says that the stress over his failure to find a distributor for the follow-up to the Centipede trilogy significantly exacerbated his condition.

The EU is using a currency revamp as an opportunity to be less neutral and try some finely balanced identity-building

Is Europe best represented by the bold intellect of Marie Curie, the sprawling imagination of Miguel de Cervantes and the intense musical genius of Ludwig van Beethoven? Or by a migrating stork and a bee-eater, swooping across borderless plains and enjoying freedom of movement across European countries?

The quest to settle this issue has engaged a surprising number of people across the continent, after more than 6 million people voted in a survey within just a week of its launch to determine whether the newly redesigned euro bank notes should depict either cultural figures or birds and waterways.

Controversial anatomist’s body ‘will definitely be plastinated’ in line with his wishes, a spokesperson said

Gunther von Hagens, who developed a technique for permanently preserving human bodies in rigid states and toured the world with his controversial Body Worlds exhibition, has moved closer to fulfilling a long-held wish to be sliced up and displayed in a museum after dying aged 81.

“It is with deep sadness that the family and the Institute for Plastination announce the passing of Dr Gunther von Hagens, inventor of plastination and creator of the Body Worlds exhibitions,” the German anatomist’s institute said in a statement on Monday.

Danny Boyle’s drama about the acquisition of the Sun and a four-hour Elon Musk documentary will premiere alongside new films from Martin McDonagh and Werner Herzog – but only one female director has a movie in competition

The Venice film festival promises to take a swing at media moguls of the print and digital era this year, with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s new film about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Sun and a new documentary about Elon Musk included in the lineup of the films for the festival’s 83rd edition.

In Boyle’s Ink, which will open the festival on the Lido on 2 September, Australian actor Guy Pearce plays compatriot newspaper tycoon Murdoch, whose purchase of the Sun in 1969 sensationalised the media landscape and transformed public life in Britain. The script is written by Olivier award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham (Dear England, Brexit: The Uncivil War).

Timmy: Hope Dies Last portrays stranded humpback as saviour for a divided country, igniting both optimism and grief

When people in Germany organised a daring rescue mission for a humpback whale stranded on the Baltic coast in April, it briefly looked like a country stricken with political division and economic anxiety was rallying around a common cause.

A new satirical play inspired by the episode, however, suggests the spectators, social media influencers, politicians and millionaires who flocked to the seaside in support never just wanted to rescue the cetacean that came to be nicknamed Timmy, but for Timmy to rescue them.

Collector of dream stories from across continent finds ‘surprising consistency’ in the way they are structured

A young woman discovers in a dream that she is responsible for the Holocaust and tries to come up with schemes to make amends – and then gets distracted by a business meeting. Another woman dreams she is being chased by murderers – and ends up chilling in front of the TV with them. A man gets to advise Emmanuel Macron on social policy – and talks to him about haircuts and dog training instead.

Dreams can turn our innermost fears and darkest fantasies into miniature dramas. But an anthology of recollected dreams harvested from online forums across Europe shows how the story arc of the subconscious often bends towards anticlimaxes.

Country is first to join since Australia in 2015 as event director says it ‘continues to welcome the world’

Canada will ​join the Eurovision song contest in 2027, becoming the first new ⁠participant since Australia in 2015, organisers have announced.

Participation is not limited to countries in geographic Europe and instead is open to all members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which Canada joined last week. Australia is an associate member.

German director says he recognises actor should have been better protected during filming of Wrong Move

German director Wim Wenders has withdrawn from circulation his 1975 film Wrong Move, because of a scene featuring a child actor topless who was 13 at the time of filming.

The director said in a statement released on Wednesday: “Streaming, TV and distribution partners have been instructed to no longer make the film publicly accessible.”

After winning the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival, the exiled auteur sent a direct message to the Russian president urging him to stop the war

Accoladed director Andrey Zvyagintsev has sent a direct message to Vladimir Putin urging him to start listening to the Russian people and end the “senseless” war in Ukraine, continuing a war of words between Russia’s most revered living film-maker and the Kremlin that started at the Cannes film festival awards ceremony over the weekend.

“Except for the limbs torn off from your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal, except for the massacre of young people that the country needs to build life and the future – nothing good is on the horizon if we don’t stop,” the exiled auteur said in a message sent to the Russian president’s press secretary through official channels on Tuesday.

‘Europe must never be subjected to Trump’ says Spanish film-maker at a Cannes press conference for his new film, Bitter Christmas

Pedro Almodóvar has argued that film-makers have a “moral duty” to speak up about politics or they will enable the kind of stifling of free speech taking place in the US, warning that “Europe must never be subjected to Trump”.

Speaking at the Cannes premiere of his new film Bitter Christmas, the veteran Spanish director was responding to questions about previous comments in which he had remarked on a lack of protests at the Oscars earlier this year.