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The annual Venice Film Festival hosted several documentaries examining wars still underway that received both praise and criticism. Filmmakers offered insights into conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine through their work, though some faced skepticism over their portrayals.

In “Russians at War,” Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova followed a Russian battalion in eastern Ukraine over seven months. She aimed to show the human side of Russian soldiers rarely seen in Western media. However, Ukrainian filmmakers argued it whitewashed Russian actions and ignored the larger context of attacks on civilians. Trofimova defended her work, stating she saw no war crimes during her time embedded and the soldiers were “absolutely ordinary guys.”

Ukrainian filmmaker Olga Zhurba’s documentary “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” took a different approach, focusing on the war’s human toll on Ukrainian civilians without battle scenes. However, she criticized “Russians at War” for providing a “distorted picture of reality” and spreading “false narratives.

Angelina Jolie got her flowers. Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson got it on. And studios and streamers got busy playing “let’s make a deal.”

The Venice Film Festival, which kicked off on Aug. 28, hasn’t been short on drama, even as it’s been unexpectedly heavy on TV. As befits a glamorous celebration of movies that’s all about excess, this year’s edition has seen more major sales, on-screen sex, politics (on and off the red carpet), and movie-star moments than ever. In addition to Jolie and Kidman, A-listers like Jude Law of “The Order” and the “Wolfs” duo of George Clooney and Brad Pitt flashed their megawatt smiles at the splashy premieres of their films. There promises to be plenty more headline-grabbing events, but as the festival reaches its midpoint, it’s already shaping up to be one of the most consequential in recent memory.

TV Crashes...

“Why War” is both the title of Amos Gitai’s latest and a question that has long been on the director’s mind — one he has tried to answer with works like “A Letter to a Friend in Gaza” and “West of the Jordan River.” However, this seemingly direct confrontation of the query takes a roundabout path, resulting in a movie about helplessness, frustration and intellectual debate in the face of military conflict. It is based, in part, on written correspondences between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and takes an experimental, meta-fictional form, though its images can’t help but feel trepidatious, if not entirely without purpose.

Through staged scenes of battles from antiquity (one of which appears to be the First Jewish-Roman War), Gitai paves a fiery path for his rumination, though his methodology quickly proves too broad for his subject matter. Early in its runtime, the film features...

Exclusive: After last year’s October 7 attacks in Israel, local director Dani Rosenberg struggled to make sense of the horrors of the massacre and the ensuing war that would unleash what he describes as “unimaginable suffering, defying comprehension.” Feeling helpless, he decided to throw himself into what he knew best — filmmaking — and began asking himself the daunting question of whether or not these events could be represented or depicted on screen.

At the end of October 2023, Rosenberg, who had previously directed Locarno title The Vanishing Solider, began putting together what would be the beginnings of his next title Of Dogs and Men (Al Klavim Veanashim). The film, which premieres in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section on September 5, went into production just weeks after October 7, when he and a small crew entered the Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community of hardworking, intellectual and peace-driven people founded by a group of left-wing activists.

Technically, Day Four at the Venice Film Festival started at midnight for me, walking out of the after party for “Babygirl” still abuzz, trying and failing to slyly make it onto the water taxi headed to star Harris Dickinson’s after after party under the noses of A24 employees. The preceding event was one of the few gatherings happening during the festival to invite over some press to rub elbows with lead Nicole Kidman, director Halina Reijn, and company, as well as director Christos Nikou (“Fingernails”) and actress Taylor Russell (“Bones and All”) who are each serving on a different jury at La Biennale this year.

While that all made for an exciting start, the day’s offerings made for a more lowkey Saturday, with earlier screenings of films like “Battleground” and “And Their Children After Them,” both competition titles, only drawing moderate buzz. Even the premiere of Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s “Why War,...

Israeli director Amos Gitai has pushed back against efforts for his Venice-bowing film “Why War” to be boycotted from the festival.

Premiering out of the competition over the weekend, the film takes its cue from correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud as they attempted to answer questions relating to the human race’s bellicose nature and how to avoid war.

On the eve of the festival, “Why War” — alongside Dani Rosenberg’s “Of Dogs and Men” — was the subject of a letter signed by more than 300 artists, including filmmakers such as Hany Abu Assad, Enrico Parenti and Alessandra Ferrini, asserting that the film has been “created by complicit Israeli production companies that contribute to apartheid, occupation and now genocide through their silence or active participation in artwashing.”

But Gitai, speaking at a press conference on Saturday, argued that those calling for the boycott hadn’t...

Israeli director Amos Gitai has batted back calls for a boycott of his new film Why War and said both sides of the Israel–Palestine conflict need to clean out their current leaderships for peace to prevail.

Premiering this weekend of out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Why War takes its cue from correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud on the question of the human race’s bellicose nature and how to avoid war. The work mixes reenactments of the two figures reciting their exchanges, with historic images of war in art and acted scenes of characters dealing with the psychological impact of conflict.

Although the movie has no direct connection to today’s conflict in the Middle East, Gitai and Why War have been the target of protests in Venice. Around 300 filmmakers signed an open letter opposing the movie, and Dani Rosenberg...

Israeli director Amos Gitai has batted back calls for a boycott of his Venice work Why War and said both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict need to clean out their current leaderships for peace to prevail.

Premiering this weekend of Out of Competition in Venice, Why War takes its cue from correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud on the question of the human race’s bellicose nature and how to avoid war.

The work mixes reenactments of the two figures reciting their exchanges, with historic images of war in art and acted scenes of characters dealing with the psychological impact of conflict.

It was initiated after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed more than 1,000 people, and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has wreaked destruction on the territory and killed more than 40,000 people.

However, Gitai said his vision had been...

Around 300 filmmakers have signed an open letter opposing two Israeli films set to screen at the Venice Film Festival.

The protest by filmmakers and artists amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict is aimed at Dani Rosenberg’s Hebrew-language film Al Klavim Veanashim (Of Dogs and Men), which is set against the backdrop of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel, and Amos Gitai’s Why War. The latter stars Irène Jacob, Mathieu Amalric, Micha Lescot and Jérôme Kircher and is set for a world premiere on Aug. 31 out of competition.

“Of Dogs and Men, shot in the midst of Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza, whitewashes the genocide. Like Of Dogs and Men, Why War was created by complicit Israeli production companies that contribute to apartheid, occupation and now genocide through their silence or active participation in artwashing,” the letter, published by Artists for Palestine Italia, states.

The artists are represented...