Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, about physicist Lev Landau, stars Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has refused to speak out against Putin’s war

The director of a controversial new Russian film has said “everyone pays for his own choice” when asked about his lead’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In film-maker Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, which premiered at the Venice film festival on Wednesday, Greek-Russian star conductor Teodor Currentzis plays the eponymously nicknamed protagonist, Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist Lev Landau.

Alex Gibney’s marathon documentary delivers numerous eye-raising insights into the broligarch’s business deals, early idealism and apocalyptic appetite for fathering children

Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about the richest broligarch on the planet has been one of the most eagerly anticipated films at the Venice film festival this year. The Oscar-winning 72-year-old, who has in previous films taken on the US military, the Catholic church, Vladimir Putin and Scientology, has been investigating the tech tycoon’s ascent and speaking to people in his orbit since late 2022, before his Maga turn and Trump 2.0.

The result clocks in at just under four hours and presents a comprehensive answer to how on earth one man managed to amass so much money and political influence. It is shocking less for any individual new pieces of information Gibney has unearthed than for its totality. Here are six things the film tells us:

The European Prize for Urban Public Space’s shortlist highlights projects helping people cope with climate crisis

In the words of Joni Mitchell, the planners of many urban centres around the world “paved paradise and put up a parking lot”. The European Prize for Urban Public Space tries to show that cities don’t have to be locked in the automotive age for ever.

The prize’s latest shortlist, announced on Wednesday, highlights architectural projects that convert infrastructure for cars into spaces that help urban dwellers cope with the soaring temperatures of the climate crisis: roundabouts that have become splash pools, thoroughfares turned into green havens, and car parks into gardens.

Ashley St Clair was speaking at the Venice film premiere of Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk, where she warned of his dangerous influence

• Musk review – epic study of the world’s richest and most banal man

Elon Musk is sowing “deliberate division” via his social media platform X that will be catastrophic unless regulated, the mother of one of the 14 confirmed children fathered by the world’s richest man has warned.

In Musk, a new documentary by veteran film-maker Alex Gibney, former Maga influencer Ashley St Clair says Musk told her in a text message he wanted to have a child with her because he needed to have “a legion of children before the civil war”.

Director Alexandre Smia says film about Russia detonating nuclear warhead – and US refusing to respond – is not unrealistic

Russia has detonated a nuclear warhead over the Black Sea to underline its desire to revenge an assassination attempt on the Russian president. Germany and Italy urge restraint. The American president opts out of the standoff altogether and moots taking out Ukraine’s leader to appease Moscow.

A new thriller, which has brought nuclear anxiety to the red carpets of the Venice film festival this week, plays through what would happen next. In Jupiter, which premiered on the Lido on Friday, the duty to square up to the Kremlin and enter the stress-inducing mind games of the nuclear deterrent falls on the fictional French president Paul Archambault (played by the hulking French actor Denis Ménochet), who is backed in his mission by the British prime minister.

May el-Toukhy says we must end veneration of male directors that causes ‘structural problem’ for women

The enduring cult of male genius is keeping down female film-makers, one of the only two female directors in the running for the top prize at this year’s Venice film festival has warned.

“I’ve never ever read an article where a female director is promoted as a genius,” said the Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, whose film Woman Unknown has been selected for the Golden Lion competition on the Lido this year.

Director’s controversial comments earlier this year warned of films that ‘enter the field of politics’

The director Wim Wenders has clarified personal views on the relationship between cinema and politics that caused controversy earlier in the year, saying at the Venice film festival that he does not believe film-makers ought to stay out of politics altogether.

During the Berlin film festival, the veteran German director, who was acting as the jury president, had said at a press conference that “we have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics.”

The Bavarian auteur talks directing Kate and Rooney Mara in Bucking Fastard and his popularity on Instagram

In outsider visionaries such as Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo or Timothy Treadwell, renegade German director Werner Herzog has created some of cinema’s most memorable monomaniacs – characters singularly obsessed with finding mythical cities made of gold, with building opera houses in the middle of the rainforest, or with befriending wild grizzly bears.

But suggestions that they could be role models for the modern-day neurodiversity movement send this famously fearless film-maker running for the hills. “I don’t like the term neurodivergence and ADHD, or whatever – it sounds like political correctness, which scares me under the table,” Herzog said at the Venice film festival.

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.