Veronesi’s ‘Dio Ride’ Lands Closing Slot at 83rd Venice Film Festival

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival will close on a Veronesi. Variety reported on 17 July 2026 that “Dio Ride,” written and directed by Italian filmmaker Giovanni Veronesi, will play in the out-of-competition slot when the festival runs from 2 to 12 September on the Lido. The announcement lands two months before the curtain rises, and arrives before the official lineup has been fully unveiled.

Venice’s closing-night bookings have long functioned as a counterweight to its competition slate, which is the part of the programme that hands out the Golden Lion. An out-of-competition closer is the festival’s way of sending visitors home with a commercial crowd-pleaser or a sentimental homecoming, rather than the kind of austere art film that tends to dominate the awards conversation. Veronesi, a fixture of Italian popular cinema since the late 1990s, fits that brief. His filmography has skewed toward accessible drama and ensemble romance, and his placement signals a festival willing to trade prestige for warmth on its final evening.

A festival still taking shape

The closing announcement arrived without the rest of the programme. As of the Variety dispatch timestamped 09:05 UTC on 17 July 2026, the official Venice schedule had not been published; festival organisers typically roll out the bulk of their slate in late July, with the competition titles and juries following in August. That puts “Dio Ride” in an unusual position: the closer is named before most of the films it will bracket. The likely reading is logistical, Veronesi’s team needed a slot locked in early, and closing out-of-competition is the easiest piece of real estate to commit to without disturbing the still-forming competition grid.

For Veronesi, the booking is a return to a stage where he has appeared before, but rarely as the closing attraction. Italian directors continue to anchor Venice’s identity, even as the festival’s competition slate has tilted toward international art cinema over the past decade. A Veronesi closer is also a reminder that Italian cinema still has a domestic audience large enough to make a Lido premiere commercially meaningful, a fact that some of the more dire forecasts about the country’s film industry tend to overlook.

What the booking does and does not signal

Closing-night selections are not predictive. No Golden Lion, no Grand Jury Prize, no acting awards are attached to the slot; the film is screened after the prizes have already been handed out, by definition outside the competition. The decision does, however, set a tone for the festival’s final hours, and it cues the press corps on what kind of Italian film the Biennale wants associated with its 2026 edition. Variety’s brief note described the film as starring Pie[r], the dispatch cut off mid-credit, and the full cast list has not yet been confirmed in available reporting.

There is a competing read worth noting. Closing-night Italian films have occasionally been used as a soft diplomatic gesture, a way of rewarding the home industry that supplies a meaningful slice of the festival’s logistical workforce and audience base. The selection could simply reflect that calculation, with Veronesi as a known quantity rather than a statement. The evidence in circulation does not yet allow a firmer conclusion.

What to watch before September

Three dates will define the story. The full Venice programme is expected in the last week of July 2026. The competition jury, usually chaired by a major international filmmaker, tends to be announced in mid-to-late August. And the festival itself opens on 2 September on the Lido, with “Dio Ride” closing the eleven-day run on 12 September. Between now and then, the more consequential questions are which films make the competition, which figures sit on the jury, and whether any of them end up defining the autumn awards calendar. The closer, by design, will not.

This publication framed ‘Dio Ride’ as a programmer’s choice rather than a contender, distinguishing closing-night status from the Golden Lion conversation that the September festival will actually settle.