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Venice Days Unveils Female-Centric Selection, Kicking Off With Lili Horvát’s ‘My Notes on Mars’ Starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend
The Venice Film Festival's independently run Giornate Degli Autori section, known as Venice Days, has announced a lineup weighted towards female directors and stories, opening with Hungarian director Lili Horváth's first English-language feature, "My Notes on Mars," starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend. The choice underscores the section's stated focus this year on works by women and on stories exploring female experience, regardless of who directed them.
This year's selection totals 25 world premieres, 14 of them directed by women. "My Notes on Mars," about an astrophysicist who vanishes and later reappears with no memory of her life except her Mars research, is one of 10 titles in the Venice Days competition, which will be judged by an all-female jury led by Catalan director Carla Simón alongside Hania Mroue and Sara Fgaier. Other competition entries include Kuba Dorabialski's "Agata the Writer" with Mia Wasikowska, Nicola Sorcinelli's "Balcanica" starring Matilda De Angelis, Damilola Orimogunje's "Dear Ajayi" and Robert Guédiguian's "A Woman Today," while special events include Francesca Archibugi's documentary on feminist critic Carla Lonzi and Ashgan El-Hamus's debut "Al Baraneya."
In short
- Venice Days 2026 opens with Lili Horváth's "My Notes on Mars"
- Section features 25 premieres, 14 by women directors
- All-female jury led by Carla Simón judges 10 competition titles
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Women directors remain significantly underrepresented in festival programming and film financing globally, making deliberate curation to amplify their work a legitimate correction of historical imbalance. By prioritising female-directed films and female-centred narratives, Venice Days helps ensure audiences encounter diverse perspectives and stories that might otherwise be overlooked, whilst creating meaningful opportunities for talented filmmakers to reach prestigious platforms and build careers.
The case against
Festival selections should be grounded primarily in artistic merit rather than demographic characteristics; when programming becomes explicitly demographics-driven, it risks suggesting the chosen films might not have been selected on quality alone, potentially undermining both the credibility of the programme and the recognition earned by the filmmakers themselves. Merit-based curation, whilst ideally blind to demographics, ultimately serves the medium better than selection criteria that prioritise representation over artistic achievement.
Explained simply
Venice Days, or Giornate degli Autori, is an independently run section of the Venice Film Festival. It presents new films, including world premieres, and has its own competition and jury.
This year, many of its selected films are directed by women or explore women’s experiences. The competition jury is led by Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón, alongside Hania Mroue and Sara Fgaier.
The selection brings together filmmakers and actors from several countries. Its focus matters because it shows how a major festival section is choosing to present a range of stories and perspectives.
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