Bertolucci's Final Screenplay Reaches the Screen at Venice with The Echo Chamber
Bernardo Bertolucci died in 2018 with a screenplay still in its second draft. On 6 September 2026, that screenplay — finished by others and brought to the screen by director Andrea Pallaoro — screened in Competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival under the title The Echo Chamber (The Hollywood Reporter).
The film unspooled in the Sala Grande, the festival's main hall, at 19:45 as one of 21 titles competing for the Golden Lion, the top prize, to be awarded on 12 September 2026 (La Biennale di Venezia; WMBD Radio).
Pallaoro, whose three previous features — Medeas, Hannah, and Monica — were all written with Orlando Tirado, took on someone else's script for the first time. He developed the project with Bertolucci's own collaborators, working from a screenplay credited to Bertolucci himself, Ilaria Bernardini, and Ludovica Rampoldi (The Hollywood Reporter).
The cast brings real weight. Alicia Vikander plays Anne; Luca Marinelli plays Leo. Susan Sarandon rounds out the principal trio, joining Pallaoro and Vikander on the Lido for the film's arrivals and photo call (The Hollywood Reporter; Guard Online; Plain Dealer). The runtime is 2 hours 3 minutes (The Hollywood Reporter).
Audiences got their first glimpses earlier in the summer. Deadline released the first clip and published an interview with Pallaoro about reviving Bertolucci's final screenplay back in July 2026 (Deadline). A teaser followed on 28 August, foregrounding the three leads (The Playlist).
The film is an Italian-Belgian co-production — a cross-border arrangement common in European cinema, where two countries' production companies pool resources and tax incentives to finance a single film (La Biennale di Venezia). International distribution deals are already in place (Yahoo Entertainment).
The theatrical run begins in Italy on 10 September, four days after the Venice premiere (The Hollywood Reporter).
What makes this stand out is the lineage. Bertolucci — the director of Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor, the latter winning nine Oscars including Best Picture — left behind an unfinished screenplay when he died at 77. That Pallaoro, a film-maker three features into his career, chose to carry it forward rather than a long-established name, gives The Echo Chamber a generational charge: a younger director completing the last words of a master.
