PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Todd Phillips, director of the film Joker.
Todd Phillips is at the 76th Venice Film Festival in competition with Joker, an origin story of the most important antagonist of Batman, Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Is turning into Joker a defeat for the wanna be comedian Arthur Fleck or an evolution? Todd Phillips clarifies that the film is structured and narrated in a way that the audience can decide.
Joker centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is indelibly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night… but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Big girls don't cry captures the wild, unfiltered world of teenage life in 2006—and the filmmaker’s journey from Jane Campion’s mentorship to the big screen.
Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning leads the Rome Film Fest 2026 winners, with major awards also going to Congo Boy, Mustang and The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd. The complete list of winners and the festival's …
At the Rome Film Fest 2026 with Me, You, protagonist Sonia Ammar on Caia, the young woman at the heart of Bille August’s film and on the invisible scars of war