Venice 2026: Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger, hagiographic docu, still euphoric

This behind-the-scenes look at the Oasis reformation is a very formatted celebration of the group and its fans, but shows some strong moments between the Gallagher brothers.

If you have no interest in Oasis, if you take no pleasure in bawling Rock ‘n’ Roll Star Or Live Forever in a pub or a stadium surrounded by friends wearing an Adidas bucket hat or a Fred Perry polo shirt, if you haven’t discovered the joys of dynamic pricing by trying to buy tickets to attend the group’s reformation in the summer of 2025, you can move on. This film, Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Angerpresented this weekend in its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival (and which hits theaters on September 9, before one day landing on Disney +) is simply not for you.

Certain rock docus or concert films manage to transcend their subject to reach a wider audience than the circle of fans (from Gimme Shelter has Summer of Soulwe could name tons of them) but this one is not of that caliber. He doesn’t even have the ambition, to tell the truth. Its goal is to celebrate the group, its anthems, its legend, and also its audience which, in Cardiff, Manchester, London (then in South America, Asia, the United States…), transformed, in the summer of 2025, the patching up of the enemy brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher into a first-class cultural event.

Even Damon Albarn, singer of Blur and old rival from the Britpop years, bowed: “It’s their summer. They won.” The film documents that moment, the collective intoxication, the tears in the eyes, the hectoliters of beer in the blood, the pride working class (despite the price of tickets), the joy of coming together as night falls to scream at the top of our lungs, watch Liam shake his tambourine and finally mix his voice with that of his brother on Nodafter 16 years of quarrel and invective in the press.

During the first twenty minutes of the film, absolutely fabulous, we nevertheless thought we were holding gold. A documentary of another caliber. This is the time devoted to tour rehearsals, when a little suspense still lingers: what will the atmosphere be like when the brothers are finally reunited in the same room? Will they be able to support each other? The first day, Noel and the rest of the group play without Liam, working to put in place the sound structure for the concerts to come. Day 2, we wait for Liam, an angel passes by… Suddenly, the door to the room opens: the eternal brat enters. He gives a little nod to everyone, throws a joke, then sits behind the microphone, sings the songs impeccably, and breaks away. Noel stands there like two circles, then finally blurts out: “OK, I respect that attitude.” We understand that Liam is the star, untouchable, and that Noel, the big brother, the author of the songs, the brain of the group, has made a reason for it. In a few minutes, the new balance of power within the group was exposed. Later, on July 4, the night of the premiere in Cardiff, Liam will take Noel by the hand as he goes on stage. As much to please the crowd as to signify that there is still a little brotherly love pulsing behind the business. When he talks about that moment, Noel has tremors in his voice…

This kind of thrill, giving the impression of accessing an intimate truth about the Gallaghers, will unfortunately be absent from the rest of the film. The group’s communication is today as closed as its setlist. SO Don’t Look Back In Anger unfolds a sequence of concert extracts (frankly euphoric), mini-portraits of fans (not super interesting) and snippets of interviews with Liam and Noel – funny, but less inspired department punchlines than in their golden age.

Implicitly, the film questions the meaning of all this. Socially, culturally, politically, what does the reformation of Oasis mean? Is it a transcendent and religious experience? A whiff of nostalgia for the good old, mythologized days of the nineties? The possibility of communion in a divided world (Noel wanted to clarify: “Oasis is not a right-wing thing”) ? A little bit of all that, answers this film directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, but strangely presented in the credits as “created and written” by Steven Knight (star screenwriter, creator of Peaky Blinders). An expression that we generally use for TV series rather than for rock docuses. But hey, after all, the story of the Gallagher brothers is the best English series of the last thirty years, right?

Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Angerby Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, in theaters September 9.