--- title: 'Venice 2026 Puts ‘Bunker,’ Clooney and Couture on the Same Red Carpet' type: 'blog post' section: 'Away From Set' format: 'Editorial feature' standfirst: 'The 83rd Venice Film Festival has turned its opening days into a parade of premieres, jury power and carefully engineered glamour. Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem’s ‘Bunker’ drew the loudest response yet, while Laura Dern, Kendall Jenner and Maggie Gyllenhaal supplied the image economy festivals now run on.' author: 'Dorothy Kwan' published: '2026-09-09' updated: '2026-09-09' about_people: - 'Maggie Gyllenhaal' - 'George Clooney' - 'Stephen Graham' tags: - 'Venice Film Festival 2026 red carpet photos' - 'Bunker Venice premiere Penélope Cruz Javier Bardem' - 'Kendall Jenner Giorgio Armani Venice Film Festival' - 'Kate Rooney Mara Bucking Fastard premiere' - 'Maggie Gyllenhaal Venice jury president 2026' - 'Laura Dern Wild Horse Nine premiere photos' sources: - 'https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/photos-of-venice-film-festival-stars-and-22422774.php' - 'https://deadline.com/gallery/bunker-venice-film-festival-red-carpet-photos-paul-dano-penelope-cruz-javier-bardem-stephen-graham-more/' - 'https://www.justjared.com/2026/09/08/penelope-cruz-javier-bardem-premiere-their-movie-bunker-at-venice-film-festival-stun-in-red-carpet-appearance/' - 'https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrities/nick-nolte-85-sports-scruffy-gray-beard-during-rare-appearance-at-venice-film-festival-photos/ar-AA2bPq6r' - 'https://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/national/venice-film-festival-stars-and-premieres-in-photos/article_21c40c9f-47dc-5b24-9109-281c59e9c936.html' - 'https://www.aol.com/articles/laura-dern-maggie-gyllenhaal-kate-212949000.html' - 'https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2026/09/05/venice-film-festival-oasis-robert-pattinson/e6b3d4f2-a8ed-11f1-9e38-f705d048bd5a_story.html' - 'https://www.semissourian.com/world/george-clooney-honored-as-venice-film-festival-opens-in-photos-046791ee' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/venice-2026-puts-bunker-clooney-and-couture-on-the-same-red-carpet' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # Venice 2026 Puts ‘Bunker,’ Clooney and Couture on the Same Red Carpet *The 83rd Venice Film Festival has turned its opening days into a parade of premieres, jury power and carefully engineered glamour. Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem’s ‘Bunker’ drew the loudest response yet, while Laura Dern, Kendall Jenner and Maggie Gyllenhaal supplied the image economy festivals now run on.* By Dorothy Kwan, 2026-09-09 · Away From Set The 83rd Venice International Film Festival is already selling two movies at once: the films on its program and the people arranged around them. On September 8, Florian Zeller’s *Bunker* held its world premiere with Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger on the carpet. Deadline reports a 16-minute ovation, the longest of the festival so far. That is the bit film readers should care about: Venice has found its first undeniable crowd event, attached to a thriller about a billionaire’s bunker and a marriage cracking under pressure. The festival opened September 2, according to the Associated Press report carried by the Southeast Missourian, with George Clooney receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Maggie Gyllenhaal, president of the main competition jury, was on hand for the ceremony. The star traffic has not slowed. Venice is functioning as a film festival, a fashion week and a giant sorting machine for awards-season attention. The camera does not distinguish between those jobs, and neither does the internet. ## Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Give ‘Bunker’ Its First Big Flashpoint Zeller wrote and directed *Bunker* specifically for Cruz and Bardem, Just Jared reported. The setup is clean enough to fit on a cocktail napkin: an architect accepts a morally murky commission to build a survivalist bunker for a technology billionaire, and his wife starts questioning their 17-year marriage. The festival describes the picture as a dramatic thriller about fear, doubt and ethical choices in an uncertain world. There is a lot of official fog in that description. “The anxieties of an increasingly uncertain world” could mean nuclear war, climate collapse or a bad quarter at a venture-capital firm. The concrete hook is the bunker and the couple trapped inside the moral problem. Zeller says he wanted to examine love, fidelity and forgiveness while keeping viewers unsure whether they were watching reality, fiction or a self-conscious game with truth. The film has not been reviewed here, and the reporting does not tell us how that ambiguity works on screen. What the carpet does tell us is that the package is legible. Cruz and Bardem arrived together; Graham, Dano and Schwarzenegger joined them; jury president Gyllenhaal and Luca Guadagnino attended the screening. Sony Pictures Classics plans a release later this year, timed for awards season, Just Jared reported. The 16-minute ovation gives the distributor a useful piece of oxygen before anyone has to explain the movie beyond “billionaire bunker.” ![President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. met with world-renowned actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer, during a courtesy call at Malacañan Palace on Friday.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/32c3839c-21c5-474b-9e0f-c35884021b8f.webp) *Photo: Presidential Communications Office · Public domain · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025-11-14_%E2%80%93_President_Marcos_meets_with_George_and_Amal_Clooney_to_discuss_press_freedom_(03).jpg)* ## Venice’s Opening Days Turned Dressing Into a Second Program The festival’s fashion parade has its own cast list. AOL’s photo report placed Laura Dern in a black Dior lace gown with crystal embellishment for *Wild Horse Nine* on September 3. Dern had presented Clooney with his lifetime-achievement award the day before, linking the opening ceremony’s institutional glow to the next night’s premiere dressing. Kendall Jenner made her Venice red-carpet debut at the same *Wild Horse Nine* premiere in a gold Giorgio Armani gown from the designer’s Fall 1995 collection, with Briony Raymond jewelry and Aquazzura heels, AOL reported. That is not a costume detail; it is the event’s operating system. Archive fashion supplies instant history, the jewelry supplies product, and the photograph supplies the memory. Maggie Gyllenhaal wore a voluminous black Balenciaga gown with a one-shoulder shape and puffed sleeves to the September 4 screening of *15/18 (A Place to Heal)*. Her jury role makes every appearance double-duty: she is a filmmaker at a screening and an official face of the competition. John Malkovich, meanwhile, wore a loose Dior suit and an off-white silk shirt with a ruffled collar to the *Wild Horse Nine* premiere. Phoebe Waller-Bridge chose black trousers and a white cape-style Celine top instead of a conventional gown. The point is not that Venice has discovered clothes. It is that the festival now photographs every category of relevance at once: jury authority, old-school movie glamour, fashion-world novelty and the artful refusal of a dress code. ![Stephen Graham winning Lead Actor at BAFTA TV Awards May 26](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/fb42c72a-4c12-460d-8344-8f95b8a299f6.webp) ![Maggie Gyllenhaal (51629287201)](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/14069dbd-721e-4b8c-b8c1-6bd36e1385c2.webp) *Photos: JaceMerlyn · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Graham_at_BAFTA_2026.jpg); Montclair Film · [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maggie_Gyllenhaal_(51629287201).jpg)* ## Kate and Rooney Mara Make a Career First Look Like a Bit At the September 3 premiere of *Bucking Fastard*, sisters Kate and Rooney Mara appeared together in black: Kate in Armani Privé, Rooney in Louis Vuitton. AOL reported that it was their first movie together. They play twins Jean and Joan Holbrooke in Werner Herzog’s film, which gives the photo a neat little loop—real sisters playing screen twins while wearing coordinated looks. It is almost too tidy. Venice loves a visual premise you can understand before the caption ends. Still, the detail lands because it is specific, and because the sisters’ matching palette does not need a paragraph of publicity language to explain itself. Vittoria Ceretti brought another version of black-carpet classicism to *Wild Horse Nine* in a velvet Armani Privé column gown with a sheer crystal-covered neckline. Leslie Bibb attended that premiere in an ArdAzAei halter gown with a floral design, thigh-high slit and rosette detail to support longtime partner Sam Rockwell, who wore a black suit with satin lapels, a silver brooch and Ray-Ban sunglasses. AOL called it a glamorous date night. The photographs do the less glamorous work of making the arrangement obvious: one person is in the movie, one person is there for him, and both understand the assignment. ![President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. met with world-renowned actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer, during a courtesy call at Malacañan Palace on Friday.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/f9b224ae-5964-4692-b106-5f4c50216af1.webp) ![Owen Cooper & Stephen Graham at TV BAFTA red carpet May 26](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/d70f9f66-281a-49a0-9c0a-055c1d990cf4.webp) *Photos: Presidential Communications Office · Public domain · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025-11-14_%E2%80%93_President_Marcos_meets_with_George_and_Amal_Clooney_to_discuss_press_freedom_(02).jpg); JaceMerlyn · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Owen_Cooper_%26_Stephen_Graham_at_BAFTA_2026_05.jpg)* ## The Festival’s Photo Economy Keeps Getting More Blunt Deadline’s *Bunker* gallery includes Cruz and Bardem together, then splits them into individual portraits, alongside Dano, Zeller, Schwarzenegger and Gyllenhaal. Just Jared adds the couple’s filmography, dating their screen collaborations back to *Jamón Jamón* in 1992 and listing *Bunker* as their ninth movie together. The archive turns a premiere into a relationship timeline, then into a sales argument. That is Venice in 2026: a serious festival with a celebrity photo desk bolted to its side. The arrangement can sound committee-made when the language swells—“the emotional and moral challenges” of “our time”—but a few images cut through. Cruz and Bardem standing together. Jenner in a 1995 Armani. Two Maras as twins. And a 16-minute ovation for a bunker movie before the public has seen a frame. ## How this piece was made **Format:** Editorial feature ## In this piece - [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://cinepixo.com/people/maggie-gyllenhaal) - [George Clooney](https://cinepixo.com/people/george-clooney) - [Stephen Graham](https://cinepixo.com/people/stephen-graham) ## Sources - https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/photos-of-venice-film-festival-stars-and-22422774.php - https://deadline.com/gallery/bunker-venice-film-festival-red-carpet-photos-paul-dano-penelope-cruz-javier-bardem-stephen-graham-more/ - https://www.justjared.com/2026/09/08/penelope-cruz-javier-bardem-premiere-their-movie-bunker-at-venice-film-festival-stun-in-red-carpet-appearance/ - https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrities/nick-nolte-85-sports-scruffy-gray-beard-during-rare-appearance-at-venice-film-festival-photos/ar-AA2bPq6r - https://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/national/venice-film-festival-stars-and-premieres-in-photos/article_21c40c9f-47dc-5b24-9109-281c59e9c936.html - https://www.aol.com/articles/laura-dern-maggie-gyllenhaal-kate-212949000.html - https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2026/09/05/venice-film-festival-oasis-robert-pattinson/e6b3d4f2-a8ed-11f1-9e38-f705d048bd5a_story.html - https://www.semissourian.com/world/george-clooney-honored-as-venice-film-festival-opens-in-photos-046791ee Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/venice-2026-puts-bunker-clooney-and-couture-on-the-same-red-carpet Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.