VENICE - Two decades after their last public appearance together, Liam and Noel Gallagher locked arms on the red carpet Monday night at the world premiere of Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger, a documentary chronicling the band’s rise and the long road to their 2025 reunion. The brothers, whose feud defined British rock for much of the 2000s and 2010s, offered a rare moment of unity before a packed cinema at the Venice Film Festival, where the film screened ahead of its September 9 theatrical release.
The 123-minute documentary, directed by Dylan Southern, traces the Manchester band’s arc from gritty local club nights to stadium-filling global fame, weaving together rarely seen archival footage and fresh interviews with the principal players. According to the film’s official synopsis, it aims to capture the "meteoric rise of Oasis through rare footage and untold stories" while contextualizing the new energy surrounding Oasis Live '25, the reunion tour that finally brought the warring siblings back to the same stage this year. That tour, which saw the band play to sold-out crowds across the UK and beyond, serves as the documentary’s emotional and structural anchor.
For festival audiences, the premiere was less about the film’s formal craft and more about the spectacle unfolding in front of the cameras. Noel, 59, and Liam, 54, arrived separately but converged at the foot of the steps, exchanging a brief nod before Liam put an arm around his older brother’s shoulder. They held the pose for photographers for nearly two minutes - long enough for seasoned observers to note the absence of the icy distance that has defined their relationship since the band’s acrimonious 2009 split. Noel then whispered something in Liam’s ear; Liam laughed, and they walked into the theater side by side.
Inside, the screening drew a warm if not ecstatic response. The film, which carries a TMDb rating of 0/10 at the time of writing - a placeholder typical of pre-release titles - was praised by early attendees for its candid interviews and its refusal to airbrush the band’s history. Southern, best known for his work on Supersonic (2016), which covered Oasis’s early years, here expands the canvas to include the full sweep of their career, including the turbulent middle period and the slow thaw that made the reunion possible.
The cast list is a roll call of key figures across Oasis’s many lineups: Liam and Noel Gallagher play themselves, joined by original guitarist Paul Arthurs, later-era members Gem Archer and Andy Bell, drummer Joey Waronker, and keyboardist Christian Madden. Also featured is Anaïs Gallagher, Noel’s daughter, whose presence in the doc suggests a family-focused narrative thread - one that complicates the simple "two brothers hate each other" story the tabloids have sold for years. Her appearance on screen drew audible murmurs of recognition from the Venice crowd.
The premiere carries genuine cultural weight. Oasis was never just a band; they were a British institution, and their 2025 reunion was one of the most commercially and emotionally significant events in modern rock. This documentary, then, functions as both a historical record and a piece of reunion mythology. Southern’s approach, per the film’s own promotional materials, prioritizes the band’s collective memory over any single member’s grievance. The result, judging by the premiere’s reception, is a portrait that acknowledges the fighting but emphasizes the music that made the fighting worth enduring.
Liam and Noel did not take questions after the screening. Festival staff confirmed they left through a private exit roughly 20 minutes after the credits rolled. But their red-carpet appearance alone was enough to dominate conversations in Venice’s hotel bars and press rooms. For a decade and a half, the question "Will they ever reunite?" was a constant in rock journalism. The answer, delivered through locked arms and quiet laughter, now seems to be "they already did" - and this film, arriving just four days before its global release, stands as the permanent record of that improbable second act.
Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger opens in theaters on September 9, 2026. The film is in English.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
