Film premieres at Venice as researchers question who took famous Spanish civil war shot of ‘falling soldier’, credited to the pair’s Robert Capa alias

She was one of the most fearless female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known to have been killed while covering a war. But in life and in death, the work of Gerda Taro has often been overshadowed by the collaborator and lover whose alias she invented and sometimes shared: Robert Capa.

That may be about to change with a new biopic that seeks to pull the pioneering photographer from out of Capa’s shadow, which is premiering at the Venice film festival just as researchers claim to have proof that his most famous and controversial picture was actually taken by her.

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:

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’.”