Venice Film Festival to Close With Giovanni Veronesi’s ‘Dio Ride’

The Venice Film Festival will close with Giovanni Veronesi’s new film, ‘Dio Ride,’ according to an announcement published by The Hollywood Reporter on July 17, 2026. The publication reports that the festival’s closing-night screening will be devoted to Veronesi’s feature, marking the end of the event’s main program with a faith-centered story set against a historical religious backdrop.

The film’s synopsis, as provided in the report, places its narrative in the mid-1600s. It describes a world in which the Church “preaches in Latin,” establishing a linguistic and cultural distance between official religious teachings and everyday listeners.

Central to the story is a character identified as Fra Leopoldo. In the synopsis, Fra Leopoldo “recount[s] the Gospel with contagious joy,” offering a contrast to formal worship conducted in Latin. The description suggests that the drama turns on the question of how religious messages are communicated and received, especially when language and authority create barriers to understanding.

The report characterizes the plot as “loosely based on real events,” indicating that while the film draws from historical material, it also departs from strict documentation in order to fit a cinematic structure. The use of that phrasing suggests the filmmakers are aiming for thematic resonance with the period rather than a fully literal historical retelling.

As the closing-night choice, ‘Dio Ride’ will join the festival’s tradition of using its final screening as a high-visibility presentation of a major new work. The festival’s choice also places additional attention on the intersection of religious life, public communication, and institutional authority that runs through the film’s described premise.

Details about cast members, production credits, runtime, and the specific festival date and screening time for the closing presentation were not included in the information provided. Festival organizers and the film’s distributors may release those elements separately as the festival schedule solidifies.

The film’s premise, centered on a figure bringing Gospel storytelling directly to people through accessible communication, may be expected to draw particular audience interest around how period religious settings are translated for contemporary viewers, especially within a major international film festival context that often foregrounds questions of culture, belief, and public speech in historical settings.