DUBAI: French-Algerian actress Sofia Boutella took her Venice Film Festival run to Instagram this week, posting the Miu Miu look she wore to the label’s Women’s Tales dinner in the city — an off-carpet turn that followed the ivory Stella McCartney gown she chose for the world premiere of “The Basics of Philosophy.”
Boutella stars in the Paul Schrader drama, which screened out of competition in the festival’s Venice Open section alongside Jack Huston, Bill Pullman and Dana Delany. The film follows a Midwestern philosophy professor writing on Baruch Spinoza whose life unravels after the death of his estranged father.
For the premiere she wore a floor-length ivory satin column with a high boat neckline, a draped cowl falling from the shoulders into loose panels down each side, and open seams at the torso. The label credited the dress to its Autumn 2026 collection. Boutella wore no visible jewelry and posed with both hands in the gown’s pockets.
The Miu Miu dinner Boutella posted from was held at Ca’ Corner della Regina and marked the label’s “Women’s Tales” short-film series, which this year added work by directors Mona Fastvold and Claire Denis.
Elsewhere at the 83rd edition, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki received the 2026 Liberatum Pioneer Award. The prize was presented during Liberatum Art and Cinema, the cultural platform’s program at the festival, which this year marked its 25th anniversary.
Liberatum gives the award to figures it says have expanded the language of their discipline. It cited Labaki for films that address displacement and conflict in the Middle East.
American filmmaker Lee Daniels and Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic were honored in the same round, Daniels for work that brought underrepresented stories to mainstream audiences and Abramovic for establishing performance art as a discipline.
Labaki directed “Capernaum,” which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign language film in 2019, and “Caramel.”
She collected the award in a check-wool corset trimmed with lace, paired with fluid wide-leg black trousers, by Beirut label Karoline Lang. The label is run by Lebanese designer Karine Tawil, who launched it in 2010 and whose collections are stocked in Paris, Alkhobar, Hong Kong and Moscow.
