Maggie Gyllenhaal can track how several experiences serving on festival juries from Cannes to Berlin has overlapped with her development as an actress turned director. “Maybe 10 days after I finished my final mix in color on ‘The Lost Daughter,’ I went right into the Cannes jury,” she said to IndieWire, speaking from the bustling Hotel Excelsior on the Lido at Venice, where her directorial debut that eventually earned her an Oscar nomination first premiered.
“It was really incredible to, after having just finished my first film, sit and watch 23 films made by really interesting filmmakers. And I absolutely feel inspired being here now,” said the filmmaker, whose run as president of the Venice 2026 competition jury, is wrapping this weekend.
Part of that development is now being in the position to do the inspiring. In addition to her juror duties, Gyllenhaal premiered her short “Flesh Impact” at Venice, starring one of this year’s Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award recipients Ellen Burstyn.
Made in collaboration with the company Genesis, the director also reteams with stars Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Johnson, plus behind the scenes collaborators like “The Bride!” cinematographer Lawrence Sher and “The Lost Daughter” editor Affonso Gonçalves, to try to imagine what screen icon Marilyn Monroe would have to say in her 100th year.
Read on to see how the project relates to her latest film “The Bride!,” why briefly experimenting with licensable AI did not work for her, and the significance of casting Burstyn as Monroe.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
IndieWire: How and when did “Flesh Impact” come together? Had you already wrapped “The Bride!” before taking it on?
Maggie Gyllenhaal: No, I was editing “The Bride!,” working quite hard at the time. I was asked to consider whether I could make a film that was to commemorate what would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday, which was this past June, and offer this imagined Marilyn Monroe an opportunity to act in a way that she wasn’t given when she was alive. This was the ask, but I’m sure they imagined a young Marilyn Monroe. And I thought, “Well, I don’t know that much about Marilyn Monroe.” I don’t know more than just your average Jane knows. But it’s an interesting thing to come to me. And so, let me let it knock around in my head for a minute and see what comes up.
And when I did that, this is the idea that came to me pretty much. And I wrote it very quickly and thought, “Maybe this isn’t at all what they have in mind, but this is the only way I can see it.” And then they were very interested in making it. So I thought, “OK, let’s go.” I really learned a lot about her. In order to actually write it, I went on a deep dive and got really interested and found a lot of — I was going to say empathy, which is not wrong — but also ways in which I really related to her experience.
The reason why I asked about timing was to figure out if the short is at all a continuation of what you were exploring with “The Bride!”
It is in a similar language in some ways, to be honest, because I was literally making it at the same time. There is a similarity, right? Dead, very well-known iconic people coming back to say some other things that might have been on their mind. This is definitely similar.
And there’s even an “SOS” line in both films.
That’s true. That’s true. You’re really up on my filmography. You’re right.
Your husband Peter Sarsgaard is in it, Dakota Johnson in it, both people you’ve directed before. Are you creating a stable of actors? You’ve said before that you repeat work with behind the scenes collaborators to move through projects more quickly.
Well, yes, I did feel that way about this to be honest, again, because I was still really in process on “The Bride!,” and this was happening very quickly, I was like, “I need my guys. I need my Larry Sher.” We speak the same language. We work so deeply and intimately together. I actually went with my editor from “The Lost Daughter,” but again, I love Dylan Tichenor, who cut “The Bride!” But yeah, Fonz and I also have the same language, [production designer] Karen Murphy, who did “The Bride!”
Yes, when you find people who speak your language, it just means you can start off already deeply in the process. We made this very quickly. I think I had Ellen for three-and-a-half days. It was very fast. And so I needed people I already knew. “My stable of actors,” so funny, that’s the word from “The Deuce” for your prostitutes.
Apologies! Though that reminds me that your “The Deuce” co-star Sepideh Moafi, now an Emmy nominee, is in the film.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yes! And I remember being on “The Deuce” with her and going, “That woman is good.” And I also like new people, you know? Ellen’s totally new, and Christian [Bale]’s new, and Penélope [Cruz] was new [working on “The Bride!”]. I like it all. I like having that conversation continue that’s been happening for years with people you’ve worked with already. And I also love going, “Oh wow, who are you, and what are you bringing to the party?”
Outside of the convenience of familiarity, is there a particular element you look for in an actor that is true of the people that you continue to work with, but also what you look for in some of the new people? Especially with the context that you’ve long been an actor as well.
Look, acting is the aspect of filmmaking that I have the most experience with in the most intimate way. It’s funny, I was just doing an interview with Ellen and she was talking about her training, and she’s trained at The Actors Studio. I don’t have formal training as an actress, but I had a decades-long relationship with a teacher who was also trained by Lee Strasberg. And although I didn’t really know it, I was being taught the Method too. And so, when I spoke to Ellen in the way that I speak about work, which does change very much depending on the actor, but generally I have some ideas, she and I were immediately speaking the same language.
I’ve said this before, but I think that there are many very good actors — many — and there are a tiny handful of brilliant ones. So what I think is brilliant might be different than what other people think is brilliant. And so, when I see one of those actors pop up somewhere or they come to mind, or if I have a role that I’ve written and imagined and I’m looking for someone to fill it, I’m choosing from a very tiny group, but they’re not all people I’ve worked with. There’s many others, there are people I dream of working with, and hope to work with. I’m just thinking about how different Jessie [Buckley] and Christian are in their styles and their ways of working, and they both fall into that category of brilliant. The brilliant, tiny handful.
You mentioned doing the research on this, but I wonder if Ellen is a part of that, her being in this overlap, providing this authenticity to it having been around long enough to remember when Marilyn Monroe was alive.
Yes, that’s true. And then also, to me, some of the things that the movie’s about are life or death when applied to Marilyn Monroe. The ways that we consume actors. In her case, she didn’t survive it. We all experience it in small ways, and figure out how to hobble through it and sort through it, but she couldn’t. And then you look at Ellen who did survive it, and from the time Marilyn Monroe died at 36, to Ellen now, the amount of work she’s done, some of it I’m sure she’s more proud of than others.
I’m sure there were major highs and major lows along that career, but what she’s offered us from the time Ellen Burstyn was 36 until now is so valuable, that Ellen is a presence in the movie as Ellen. And not only as Ellen playing a character, the difference between her experience and Marilyn’s experience, it makes me sad.
You did a talk here where you mentioned tinkering with AI to make “Flesh Impact.” You prefaced that it was licensable images you were working with, and you still had concerns about what the environmental impact of the work would be. Are non-generative AI and/or licensable AI tools that you’d want to try working with again?
OK, so I’ll say I was asked to consider it. I was unsure about that, and then I thought, “No, no, no, I’m going to learn. I am going to consider.” I actually don’t believe there’s anything that you can’t think about. Right? So I found it was not a useful tool for this project in that I was after literally the opposite of what it was providing me with. I was after the opposite of the icon, or I was after the really, really deeply human in relation to this iconic image of somebody. So I’m looking for the human, which I was finding in Dakota. And as soon as I put this machine generated layer on top of her, it was gone. Because really, the opening to the human is also something very, very difficult to achieve, no matter what.
If I had found that it had been useful, I would’ve been in an ethical bind because I have a lot of major concerns and reservations about AI fundamentally. I will just qualify that by saying I am no expert, and in order to participate in that panel, I did a lot of reading and talking, but I’m just at the very beginning of understanding even just conceptually what AI is. So, at that point, I didn’t find myself in that ethical bind. I just tossed it.
That furthers the nuance. People tend to put all AI under one umbrella.
But also the environmental aspect is not something you can just say as a qualification. It’s pretty fucking major, ok. And then the cultural aspect that comes along with the environmental one.
Anyway, I’m just really a beginner. I’ve just started thinking and learning about it, and there are a whole lot of things that I would really like to read, that I’ve started to collect that I will not be able to read until I finish this film festival.
Speaking of, why bring “Flesh Impact” to Venice? Does it reflect what you said in your speech at the opening ceremony about showing projects that elicit empathy?
Listen, I’m just trying to tell the truth as bravely and honestly as I can about the world as I see it. That’s all I’m doing and this is what came out.
And this felt like a safe place to achieve that?
Oh, Venice? I love Venice. Venice has been really supportive of me, and not only do I love being here — it’s like I said in the opening statement, it’s where I became a director. It’s where my first film was born. And so, I feel really supported by this festival. And so yes, I showed it to them first.