Florian Zeller began writing at twenty-two, and with his third novel he emerged as a significant figure in French letters. He then turned to the stage, and his work soon gained international traction. In 2020 he directed his first film, El padre, which earned him Oscar nominations and wins for screenwriting and for Anthony Hopkins’s performance. The string of accolades suggested an artist who could do no wrong. The new fiction, told from behind the camera and premiered in the competition at Mostra, shows that even a celebrated creator can be fallible.
A teenager grappling with a mental illness, and a family striving to understand him, is the central tension in The Son, with Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern in supporting roles. The film serves as a spiritual companion to Zeller’s acclaimed El padre, sharing thematic threads in title and form as part of a tonal trilogy that includes La madre. Both works draw from stage material, but The Son unfolds primarily through a sequence of conversations rather than a single staging device — a deliberate shift that preserves the claustrophobic mood without disguising its theatrical roots. The challenge, noted by critics, lies in how the characters often withhold their inner voices or behave in ways that feel less like true-to-life people and more like melodramatic devices. The lingering question is whether Zeller will refine these tendencies in future adaptations, including a possible take on The Mother.
If The Son can claim audacious emotional terrain, another title in the lineup keeps a steadier, more restrained course. Saint Omar, directed by Alice Diop, is a portrait grounded in a Senegalese-French perspective that refuses Hollywood’s cure-all solutions. The film follows the legal case of a Sub-Saharan immigrant accused in France, and its courtroom rhythm is meticulous and sober. There are no cinematic gimmicks here; the drama unfolds in real time, in real spaces, with a clear-eyed gaze on motherhood, female invisibility, and the social bonds that help people endure. By resisting melodrama and leaning into the texture of lived experience, Saint Omar invites audiences to consider how communities improvise justice and care in the face of systemic challenges. The result is a restrained, thoughtful work that earns its emotional charge through careful observation rather than dramatized artistry.
The duo who could rule
Dreamin’ Wild, a posthumous representative of the Emerson brothers’ early sound, captures a fusion of pop, rock, blues, and soul that never quite found a large audience upon release. The archival legacy became a touchstone for a Venice presentation that wove remembrance with contemporary sensibility. The biography, brought to the screen by Casey Affleck in a non-competition slot, revisits a moment when a long-forgotten record resurfaces. It becomes a moving meditation on sibling loyalty, second chances, and the capriciousness of luck—the kind of dream that lingers despite the odds. The film locates its power not through spectacle but through intimate memory and the quiet force of kinship, inviting viewers to reconsider what it means for a story to endure the long arc of time.