Martin McDonagh Takes on the CIA: Wild Horse Nine Premieres at Venice
Martin McDonagh has never been one to shy from dark material, but his new film Wild Horse Nine trains the lens on a target far bigger than any small-town feud: the Central Intelligence Agency.
Premiering at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, the film marks McDonagh's first feature since The Banshees of Inisherin in 2022 The Guardian. John Malkovich leads the cast as Chris, a veteran CIA agent stationed in Santiago, Chile, on the eve of the US-backed coup that toppled President Salvador Allende in 1973. Diagnosed with cancer, Chris is sent to Easter Island with his protégé Lee, played by Sam Rockwell, where he is left to reckon with decades of American covert intervention The Guardian.
The film pulls no punches in its historical scope. Alongside the 1973 Chilean coup, it depicts the CIA's role in the 1954 Guatemalan coup, the 1961 assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, and the killing of John F. Kennedy The Guardian. Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey and Tom Waits round out the principal cast, with the film running 118 minutes in English as a US-Chile co-production TIFF.
Speaking at Venice, McDonagh said the CIA "has done awful things all around the world" over the past 60 years The Guardian. The writer-director explained that he originally drafted a screenplay about a father and son who were both actors, but the story only came alive when he tied it to the CIA's overthrow of Allende. McDonagh said the film was written and made to talk about 1973 and Chile, yet now feels like a commentary on present-day geopolitics The Guardian.
One detail he found especially chilling, he said, is that the United States no longer appears to be keeping its covert actions secret. He referenced the Trump administration's January capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro as a case in point The Guardian. Asked the same question about Maduro's capture, Malkovich offered a shorter reply: "I can't think any more" The Guardian.
Wild Horse Nine was selected for the Venezia 83 Competition at the 2026 Biennale Cinema festival La Biennale di Venezia, and early awards chatter is already building. The film is Oscar-tipped, with Malkovich named as a contender for his leading role The Guardian. A Canadian premiere follows at the Toronto International Film Festival TIFF, the kind of festival corridor that often sets a film's path through autumn awards season.
McDonagh's body of work, from In Bruges to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has long walked the line between violence and dark comedy. With Wild Horse Nine, that line runs straight through real Cold War history, and the director seems intent on making audiences sit with what they find there.
