Venice Film Festival opens with Danny Boyle's Rupert Murdoch drama Ink

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival opens September 2 with the world premiere of Danny Boyle's "Ink," a dramatization of the early days of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid empire that marks the first time a Boyle film has screened in competition at the festival, according to organizers at La Biennale di Venezia. Founded in 1932 as part of the Venice Biennale, the festival is widely regarded as the world's oldest film festival, predating both Cannes and Berlin, and it has run on the Lido nearly every year since becoming an annual event in 1935.

"Ink" stars Guy Pearce as a young Murdoch and Jack O'Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor Murdoch installed to relaunch The Sun after acquiring the struggling British tabloid in 1969. Claire Foy also stars. The screenplay comes from Olivier Award-winning playwright James Graham, adapting his own 2017 stage play of the same name, and the film will have its Sala Grande premiere at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido before opening in theaters later this year, according to Variety.

Boyle's absence from Venice's competition lineup until now is notable given his standing in British cinema. He won the Academy Award for best director for "Slumdog Millionaire" in 2009, a film that collected eight Oscars from ten nominations, including best picture, and he built his reputation earlier with "Trainspotting" and the zombie thriller "28 Days Later." "Ink" gives the festival's selectors a chance to bring one of the industry's most bankable British directors into the Golden Lion race for the first time.

A jury of filmmakers judging filmmakers

This year's competition jury is led by actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, joined by directors Kaouther Ben Hania, Johnnie To and Xavier Giannoli, filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, composer-filmmaker Daniel Blumberg and film scholar Francesco Casetti, tasked with awarding the festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, at a closing ceremony on September 12, according to The Hollywood Reporter's account of the lineup announcement. Venice also hands out the Coppa Volpi, or Volpi Cup, for best actor and actress, a prize named for the festival's founder, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, and first awarded in 1935.

The main competition draws heavily on festival veterans rather than newcomers. Alongside Boyle's opener, the Golden Lion field includes new work from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong, Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang, Werner Herzog, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, Luca Guadagnino, Paul Schrader, Martin McDonagh, Wim Wenders and Hirokazu Kore-eda, according to the full lineup published by Deadline. Documentarians Laura Poitras and Robert Greene also have films in the selection, alongside Nanni Moretti, Julia Loktev, Mariano Llinás, Shinya Tsukamoto and Lance Oppenheim.

The lineup reflects Venice's long-standing role as the first major fall festival, positioning films for the awards season that follows through Telluride and Toronto and into the winter's Oscar campaigns. Venice has increasingly served as a launching pad for eventual best-picture contenders in recent years, and this year's opening slot for a pointedly political media drama — arriving as Murdoch's News Corp remains a dominant force in English-language news — is likely to draw scrutiny over how Boyle's film portrays the mogul's rise.

The main competition slate runs alongside Orizzonti, the festival's parallel section for innovative and lower-budget work, and a run of out-of-competition premieres that in past years have included starrier studio titles using Venice as a launchpad ahead of wide release. The festival runs through September 12, when the Golden Lion and the festival's other juried prizes will be announced at a closing ceremony on the Lido.