Louis Garrel Goes Italian for Nanni Moretti's Venice Competition Entry
Louis Garrel has acted in French his entire career. At the 83rd Venice Film Festival, he is speaking someone else's language — literally — for the first time.
Garrel stars in Nanni Moretti's "It Will Happen Tonight" ("Succederà questa notte"), one of the films competing for the Golden Lion, the festival's top prize. The film had its premiere screening on 5 September 2026 in the Sala Grande. It runs 103 minutes and is an Italy-France-Spain co-production, according to the La Biennale festival programme.
Garrel plays Matteo, the male half of a pair of star-crossed lovers opposite Jasmine Trinca's Greta. The two characters are followed across the years in what Variety's review called a light and predictable romantic comedy (Variety).
The pairing carries its own backstory. Moretti and Trinca first worked together on "The Son's Room" in 2001, when she was 18 and making her acting debut. "It Will Happen Tonight" is their reunion — and Moretti's first collaboration with Garrel, according to Variety.
It is also Garrel's first role performed in Italian. Moretti told Garrel the film is a love story, not a political movie, and Garrel has said he is comfortable with the film being called an elevated soap opera — a label that usually means melodrama dressed in cinematic craft (Variety).
The director has been blunt about the casting. Moretti said Garrel is "sort of his alter ego," according to Variety. The path to the role ran through screen tests that Garrel described as strict: Moretti conducted them in his office with two video cameras trained on the actor.
What makes the collaboration click on paper is the match of sensibilities. Moretti, the Italian writer-director known for films that braid personal and political threads, is handing the male lead to a French actor whose own career — from Christophe Honoré musicals to his own directing work — has orbited romantic entanglement and emotional mess. Both film-makers traffic in love stories that refuse to be tidy.
The supporting cast includes Angela Finocchiaro, Elena Lietti, Antonio De Matteo, Hippolyte Girardot, Melina Åkerman, Andrea Lattanzi, Pietro Ragusa and Paolo Sassanelli, per The Hollywood Reporter and the La Biennale programme.
Reviews out of Venice have been mixed. Variety titled its assessment "'It Will Happen Tonight' Review: Nanni Moretti's Tired, Flimsy Romcom" (Variety). The festival's jury, not the critics, decides the Golden Lion.
The 83rd Venice Film Festival runs through 12 September 2026.
