Murdoch and Musk in the crosshairs at Venice film festival

Paper tiger … Jack O'Connell in Ink by Danny Boyle, the opening film of this year’s Venice film festival. Photograph: Studiocanal View image in fullscreen Paper tiger … Jack O'Connell in Ink by Danny Boyle, the opening film of this year’s Venice film festival. Photograph: Studiocanal Murdoch and Musk in the crosshairs at Venice film festival Danny Boyle’s drama about the acquisition of The Sun and a four-hour Elon Musk documentary will premiere alongside new films from Martin McDonagh and Werner Herzog – but only one female director has a movie in competition The Venice film festival promises to take a swing at media moguls of the print and digital era this year, with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s new film about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Sun and a new documentary about Elon Musk included in the lineup of the films for the festival’s 83rd edition. In Boyle’s Ink, which will open the festival on the Lido on 2 September, Australian actor Guy Pearce plays compatriot newspaper tycoon Murdoch, whose purchase of the Sun in 1969 sensationalised the media landscape and transformed public life in Britain. The script is written by Olivier award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham (Dear England, Brexit: The Uncivil War). Oscar-winning veteran film-maker Alex Gibney profiles the wealthiest person in the world, rightwing agitator and owner of social network X in his four-hour documentary Musk, which will be screened out of competition in Venice. In recent years, Venice has sought to profile itself as the glitziest and starriest of the big three European film festivals when compared with artistically challenging Cannes and politically charged Berlin. This year’s lineup, presented by long-running artistic director Alberto Barbera this week, will still draw major stars to Venice’s waterways. View image in fullscreen Sam Rockwell (left) and John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine. Photograph: Diego Araya Corvalán/Searchlight Pictures/AP British-Irish director Martin McDonagh will showcase his new film Wild Horse Nine, in which John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell are two unlikely CIA agents in action in Chile on the eve of the coup led by Augusto Pinochet. Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey also star in the awaited return of the director of In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin. Robert Pattinson will grace the Lido as the lead in A24’s Primetime, a psychological thriller inspired by the US reality TV show To Catch a Predator, directed by Lance Oppenheim. Real-life spouses Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem star in French playwright-director Florian Zeller’s Bunker, in which a publisher-architect couple move to London and are invited by a millionaire to design a building that could withstand a nuclear bomb. Real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara star in Bucking Fastard, the first dramatic feature film in seven years by German cult director Werner Herzog. The film was originally announced as a biopi