Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn Play Marilyn Monroe in Gyllenhaal's Venice Short

Marilyn Monroe's centennial summer has already generated considerable cultural conversation, and now it is drawing one of Hollywood's most thoughtful filmmaker-actors into the conversation. Maggie Gyllenhaal, who established herself as a director of uncommon psychological depth with The Lost Daughter, has crafted a 17-minute short film titled Flesh Impact that reimagines Monroe through two distinct temporal lenses — and she's bringing it to the Venice Film Festival for its world premiere this September.

A Dual Portrait Across Time

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Flesh Impact casts Dakota Johnson as Monroe navigating the blinding apex of her celebrity, while the legendary Ellen Burstyn — herself set to receive a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at Venice this year — portrays an imagined version of what Monroe might have become had she lived beyond her death at age 36 on August 4, 1962. It is a structurally audacious conceit, splitting a single icon into two performances separated by decades of hypothetical experience. Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi, who has been drawing notice for her work in The Pitt, round out the principal cast.

The film carries the blessing of Authentic Brands Group, which manages the Monroe estate, lending the project an air of official cultural stewardship rather than mere biographical speculation. Gyllenhaal has been careful to frame it as something more personal than a strict biopic exercise: she described the work to Vanity Fair as "a mixture of Marilyn and my fantasy of her," situating it within the broader territory of what it means to be an actress — a profession she characterized as simultaneously vulnerable and extraordinarily powerful.

Gyllenhaal's Creative Assembly

The technical team Gyllenhaal assembled speaks to serious artistic ambition for a short-form project. Production designer Karen Murphy brings experience from Elvis, a film that wrestled with its own questions of iconic image and myth. Costume designer Jennifer Johnson, editor Affonso Gonçalves — whose recent work includes Hamnet — and director of photography Lawrence Sher, currently attached to The Bride, all contribute craft pedigrees that elevate the project well beyond the realm of a branded commission.

That branding element is worth noting directly: Flesh Impact is presented by Genesis, the automotive company, and produced in collaboration with INNOCEAN, Superprime, and The Cut. Amy Marentic, Genesis's chief marketing officer, framed the sponsorship around the company's stated commitment to cultural patronage — language that, whatever one makes of corporate arts funding, has at least resulted in a filmmaker of Gyllenhaal's caliber being given genuine creative latitude. The production also includes executive producers Maddi Carlton, Brandon Boerner, Rebecca Skinner, David Webb, and Courtney Kivowitz.

Venice as the Right Stage

The choice of Venice is fitting on several levels. Gyllenhaal will serve as jury president at this year's festival, placing Flesh Impact in an unusual position — a debut work screened in the same waters where its director holds institutional authority. Venice has long been a platform for short-form and experimental work that challenges conventional narrative modes, and a 17-minute dual-portrait of cinema's most mythologized star fits comfortably within that tradition. It is the kind of project that a festival oriented around film as art, rather than film as commerce, is uniquely equipped to receive.

For Johnson, the role arrives at a moment when the conversation around her screen presence has been growing more nuanced. Playing Monroe at the height of fame is not simply a matter of physical impression; it demands a performer willing to render glamour as something fragile and constructed from the inside out. That quality — the interior life beneath the luminous surface — has been a persistent subject of serious cinema, and Gyllenhaal's framing suggests she is approaching it with the same rigor she brought to her debut feature. With [Sandra Bullock returning to screens in a long-awaited sequel]((/article/sandra-bullock-returns-in-practical-magic-2-trailer) and [Jenna Ortega among those newly invited to join the Film Academy]((/article/jenna-ortega-invited-academy-2026), this centennial summer is shaping up as a particularly rich moment for actresses reclaiming their own narratives — which is, by Gyllenhaal's own account, precisely what Flesh Impact is about.

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