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The Hollywood Reporter can debut the first clip from Our Share of Sand, the debut feature from writer-director Shalini Adnani, ahead of its world premiere in Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival.

The 95-minute drama, set against India’s sand mining crisis, follows 12-year-old Maya (newcomer Maya Mehta) as she returns to India with her mother to reunite with her estranged father, a sand mining businessman, and forms a bond with Kiran, a young worker.

After an accident, a police investigation turns Maya into a key witness, with her father relying on her to absolve him. As her mother unravels, Maya uncovers a pattern of silence and exploitation that leads her to confront her father’s deception and her family’s complicity.

Adnani has said the title is rooted in the sand mining crisis in India, where extraction of river sand has accelerated erosion and contributed to flooding. “Sand, in this world, is currency — and many people are unaware that we are running out of it, and that its extraction is causing land erosion worldwide,” she writes in the film’s production notes.

In the clip, Maya questions her father’s view of what holds their family together. “We are family. We are connected by blood,” he tells her. “Is that what you think connects us?” she replies, before naming what she believes actually binds them: “The house, money.”

Mehta, making her screen debut, stars alongside Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub (Article 15, Jogi, Raanjhanaa) as Rohan and Ellora Torchia (Midsommar, Ali & Ava, House of the Dragon) as Priti, with Krish Raj More as Kiran, Ravi Patil as Dadya and Jyoti Dogra as Art.

Adnani is a Chilean-born, Indian-origin writer-director based in London. Her short film White Ant premiered at Sundance, was longlisted for a BIFA, won Best UK Short at Raindance in 2023 and was acquired by Canal+. She is a London Film School and Berlinale Talents alumna.

Our Share of Sand is produced by Sara Bonakdar for Fifth Mirror Pictures, with Alan McAlex, Balthazar de Ganay, Giorgos Karnavas and Michael Graf also producing. Developed with Film4 and the BFI, the UK-Greek co-production was shot in India, co-produced with Karnavas’ Heretic and made in association with McAlex’s Suitable Pictures (Santosh, Sister Midnight). Global Constellation is handling international sales.

Check out the clip of Our Share of Sand below.

Politics and the underrepresentation of women at the world’s major film festivals became the breakout topic of conversation at this year’s Venice jury press conference, with Maggie Gyllenhaal stating that she believes “there’s a systemic problem” behind the fact that the world’s oldest cinema showcase has just two titles directed by women in its main competition this year. 

“It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” said Gyllenhaal, the festival’s competition jury president this year, when asked about the dearth of women in Venice’s selection. “Also, could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed high art?”

“I really am walking in with a question as to why there are so few women in the main competition,” she later added.

This year’s competition has drawn scrutiny for its stark gender imbalance. Just one of the original list of 20 Golden Lion contenders — May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown — is directed by a woman, down from six female-directed competition titles last year. The festival later added to the competition with the Gaza documentary NAZA, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, bringing the total to two. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera acknowledged the disparity when announcing the lineup, calling it a recent low for the festival.

But Gyllenhaal also tipped her hat to Venice for selecting her as the event’s jury chief this year. “Alberto and Julia asking me to be the head of the main jury competition — after the two films in particular that I have made — is a very important thing to consider, too,” she said.

Gyllenhaal’s jury includes Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose acclaimed Palestinian drama The Voice of Hind Rajab won last year’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize; Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg; film scholar Francesco Casetti; French director Xavier Giannoli; Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat; and Hong Kong filmmaking legend Johnnie To. 

Together they will select the Golden Lion winner and Venice’s other main competition prizes from a field that includes Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch drama Ink, Robert Pattinson thriller Primetime, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s much-anticipated return Possible Love and NAZA, among others.

Gyllenhaal has a significant history with Venice. Her 2021 feature directing debut, The Lost Daughter, premiered in competition on the Lido and earned her the festival’s best screenplay prize before going on to receive three Oscar nominations. She also has a project in Venice this year. Her Marilyn Monroe-inspired advertorial short Flesh Impact, starring Dakota Johnson, Ellen Burstyn and Peter Sarsgaard, will screen out of competition later in the event.

The press conference proceeded after some confusion during the weekend over whether the jury’s meeting with the media — a staple of all major film festivals — would take place at all. Venice organizers stated on Saturday that the jury presser might be scrapped due to a “scheduling conflict” involving a jury member; but by Sunday, the festival said a solution had been found, and the briefing would be held as usual. 

The brief interregnum stirred industry speculation about the role politics might play at the 83rd edition, as various global conflicts — the war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Iran war — loom in the background of the world’s oldest film festival. Festival chief Barbera has described this year’s lineup as the “most political” of recent years. 

Venice’s blue-chip festival peers, meanwhile, showed earlier this year the two directions a major cultural event might take amid this globally fraught moment. In February, the Berlin festival became engulfed by political discord and social media point-scoring after jury president Wim Wenders told reporters during the opening press conference that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics.” But the Cannes Film Festival later went ahead in May with plenty of carefully calibrated political statements from filmmakers but notably less acrimony. 

Gyllenhaal was asked near the outset of the Venice press conference whether she feels filmmakers have a responsibility to be political amid the world’s current challenges. 

“We could say, ‘How are we possibly here talking about movies right now, when the world is in a state of emergency?’” she replied. “To me, the answer has something to do with empathy. I think that film allows an opening into an opportunity to find empathy inside of ourselves. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any subject or any filmmaker that shouldn’t be heard. I think we can challenge ourselves to hear stories about the most corrupt, the most perverse people, because it opens up the opportunity to find empathy for those people — and even to look at the ways in which we might have a little bad guy inside us, a little perversity inside us, a little corruption inside us, fight it as we might.”

She added: “I think that if movies really are an honest look into other people’s experience, then they are fundamentally, unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things.”

The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival officially opens Wednesday evening on the Lido with a ceremony that will fete George Clooney with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement and conclude with the world premiere of Boyle’s Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy. The festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.  

Some of the biggest stars at this year’s Venice Film Festival won’t be the famous faces walking the red carpet, but the wildly high-profile subjects of documentaries that range from intoxicating to grippingly urgent.

From Oscar winner Alex Gibney‘s 4-hour dissection of Elon Musk and Disney’s intimate Oasis reunion movie to NAZA, the politically charged documentary about “Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” and the ICE documentary They’re Here from Laura Poitras (another Oscar winner) — many of this year’s must-see movies on the Lido are clearly nonfiction. And, arguably, the biggest star who may or may not walk Venice’s red carpet — aside from Noel and Liam Gallagher — will likely do so on behalf of a documentary. Noted architecture superfan Brad Pitt recently became an executive producer of Wim Wenders’ 14-year-in-the-making documentary portrait of Peter Zumthor, the Swiss visionary behind the sprawling new Los Angeles County Museum of Art — another gem among Venice’s stacked 2026 documentary lineup.

“It’s a phenomenal year for docs at Venice, and I think this will be one of the big stories of this edition,” says Emilie Spiegel, who co-heads Cinetic Marketing, a prestige publicity agency that represents an outsized swath of every fall’s awards favorites. “To have the oldest festival in the world so clearly state that documentary is cinema, and that some of the most exciting work is happening there, is really significant. Amid budget contractions and studio consolidation, I also think it’s optimistic and savvy of Venice to be championing nonfiction right now.”

For breadth, depth, diversity and pedigree, Venice has clearly emerged as the preeminent platform for high-end nonfiction filmmaking among the world’s top festivals. While Cannes has been far more sporadic in its support of the form, and Berlin tends to offer quantity at the expense of quality, Venice has consistently brought the bangers — and the 2026 selection looks to be among its best yet.
Two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple is back with Union Town, a cinéma vérité portrait of New York delivery workers taking on some of the world’s most powerful corporations; Free Solo Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi return to extreme sporting terrain with Everest: The Other Side, about a pair of mountaineers’ audacious attempt to climb and ski the north face of the world’s tallest mountain; The Truffle Hunters duo Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw decamp to French wine country for an infectiously romantic and richly informative romp in Burgundy; and Takashi Miike, after more than 100 films and three decades spent gleefully jumping around genres, makes his first documentary with Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki, filmed over more than three years with rare access to the inner sanctum of Japan’s traditional Kabuki theater world.

Elsewhere, Julia Loktev follows her epic portrait of independent Russian journalists with My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, another nearly six-hour immersion; Russell Crowe turns the camera on himself and his globe-trotting rock band for what Venice chief Alberto Barbera has called the star’s “most personal” film. And that’s before factoring in Erik Shirai’s Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing, which promises rare access inside another of Japan’s most famously guarded traditions; Robert Greene’s Too Much Sugar, a strikingly original doc about fatherhood and masculinity; or Mariano Llinás’ three-part, more-than-five-hour biography of Jorge Luis Borges.

The festival has even built its embrace of docs more firmly into its structure this year, with a new dedicated “Film on Films” strand, where Luca Guadagnino’s gargantuan, seven-hour-plus meditation on the great Bernardo Bertolucci sits alongside Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Zizek’s The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, a tribute to the cult of Seijun Suzuki, and more.

Documentary filmmaking’s presence at Venice stretches back to the festival’s very first edition in 1932, when Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken’s 12-minute Dutch avant-garde documentary Rain (or Regen) screened on the closing night of the inaugural edition. But it wasn’t until the Barbera era that nonfiction filmmaking would vie for — and swiftly win — the festival’s signature honor. Shortly after taking the reins as artistic director of the festival for the second time in 2012, Barbera put two documentaries in the festival’s main competition for the first time in 2013 — Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known and Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA — and the latter promptly won the Golden Lion. The space and prominence Barbera has accorded to nonfiction has only grown in the years since.

“Perhaps this is not the result of a deliberate strategic choice, but rather the consequence of the fact that, year after year, we receive a growing number of submissions in the documentary genre, whose significance — both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of its ability to offer a representation of and contribute to our understanding of the major issues of our time — is perhaps unprecedented,” Barbera explains. “My impression is that the financial resources available for making documentaries have increased, as a result of growing demand from streaming platforms but also increased interest from the public, which is now much more willing to watch nonfiction films of good quality.”

In docs as well as fictional filmmaking, Venice has also staked out a commendably independent-minded stance over recent years when it comes to films that tackle conflict and fraught social issues.

“I believe Venice is one of the very few international cultural platforms that has the ability to invite filmmakers with very different — or even opposite — political positions and cultural points of view, and put their work in conversation,” says Ukrainian director and producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who is known for his work with Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev and last year directed and premiered the searingly personal documentary Notes from a True Criminal in Venice. Rodnyansky notes the sober-mindedness Venice has shown in screening bold Ukrainian and Palestinian films — such as The Voice of Hind Rajab in 2025 and the Gaza docs NAZA and Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama this year — as well as works by freethinking Russian and Israeli filmmakers, without succumbing to the blanket bans that some have called for on films and filmmakers from those countries. “Of course, state propaganda should have no place, but real independent-minded filmmaking should be welcomed wherever it comes from,” he says.

Rodnyansky is producer of Israeli documentarian Amos Gitai’s The Road to Jericho, a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho that visits the country’s threatened Bedouin community while reflecting on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The film will premiere in Venice’s out-of-competition nonfiction section. “As you understand, it’s not an easy time for Israeli filmmakers right now. They’re having a very hard time getting their movies accepted by the major festivals, regardless of what they might believe,” Rodnyansky says.

“These are turbulent times, and a festival should try to reflect the polarization of the societies we observe and continue the conversation using artistic means,” he adds. “It’s a very simple mission, and I think Barbera inherited that legacy and has continued to enrich it in a brilliant way.”

Podcast host and head of talk at Spotify Bill Simmons acknowledged that he used his daughter’s boyfriend to place some proxy sports bets on Fanduel while he was in California, where online sports betting is not legal.

On his podcast Tuesday, Simmons addressed the issue, which came up in an unrelated conversation on his podcast over the weekend.

“I talked about how I got my daughter’s boyfriend to place some some bets for me in Massachusetts because I was in L.A. I did not know about the proxy rules,” Simmons said Tuesday. “Yeah, there’s some real rules with this stuff, and they’ve ruled that they not only are the bets going to be voided — and I learned my lesson, apparently proxy betting, not allowed. I actually thought it was, but that’s fine — and now my daughter has to break up with a boyfriend. That was the other thing. No, I’m kidding. They’re gonna stay together. But yeah, I did learn [that you’re] not allowed to do that. So all those bets went out the window.”

The issue blew up earlier this week after listeners flagged the comments by Simmons, pointing out that Fanduel is a major sponsor of his Ringer podcast network. The sports betting company tells The Hollywood Reporter that when it learned of the comments it took action.

“We became aware of the issue and handled it consistent with our Terms and Conditions and Massachusetts Gaming Commission regulations, including reporting the matter to the MGC, voiding the bets, and actioning the account,” a Fanduel spokesperson says.

Likewise, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is looking into the matter, given that the proxy bets were made in that state.

“The Commission is aware of the comments made on the Bill Simmons Podcast and staff are currently reviewing the matter,” says MGC spokesperson Thomas Mills.

It isn’t clear what could come of that investigation, but the comments by Simmons Tuesday evening suggest that he is apologetic and looking to move on.

Simmons is not only one of the most influential podcast hosts in America, but one of the most powerful podcast executives, thanks to his perch at Spotify.