Casey Affleck’s “Company” opened at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday night to a four-minute standing ovation, with the director and star Nick Nolte visibly emotional as cast members cheered from the audience. The film, Affleck’s third as director and his first since 2019’s “Light of My Life,” now competes for the Golden Lion at the 83rd edition of the festival.
Set on a winter night in 1975, the story opens as a woman named Evelyn arrives uninvited at a holiday gathering and begins telling the tale of Tom, an aging hermit played by the 85-year-old Nolte, who takes in a stranded actress during a 1953 Colorado blizzard. That tale folds into another, set in 1903, about a farming couple who shelter a troubled young drifter while a string of brutal killings spreads through the frontier. The cast includes Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy, Adelaide Clemens, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan and Affleck’s own sons, Atticus and Indiana, with Atticus taking on a central role as the mysterious Caleb.
Nolte, making a rare public appearance, told Variety that Affleck’s camera work builds intimacy scene by scene, letting actors carry entire passages “from the shins up.” Clemens described her character, Rebecca, as grounded in a quiet, almost maternal steadiness, crediting Affleck’s trust in his performers for scenes built on stillness rather than dialogue.
Critics leaving Venice were divided. Several outlets noted the film conceals a genre twist for much of its 92-minute runtime, structuring itself as a nested set of stories that gradually reveals a supernatural thread running beneath its meditation on grief and forgiveness. Some reviewers praised the ambition and the visual craft, pointing to Atticus Affleck’s screen debut as a standout. Others called the pacing sluggish and the layered narrative more confusing than illuminating, arguing the film’s spiritual overtones undercut its emotional stakes.
“Company” was shot in Whistler, Canada, and produced in part by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity. No U.S. or U.K. release date has been set.
