VENICE – How do you run an international film festival during a pandemic surge?
Very, very carefully.
The Venice Film Festival, or more properly and grandly the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, founded in 1932, is the oldest film festival in the world. It’s one of the “Big Three” international film festivals – Cannes and Berlin being the others – and showcases studio films alongside arthouse fare.
The Venice Film Festival, unlike Cannes, doesn’t demand a theatrical release for films competing for its top prize and thus is more friendly to streamers like Netflix and HBO, which produced several of the films being shown.
After the 2020 edition of Cannes was canceled, the Venice Film Festival took place on schedule last fall between lockdowns during a pandemic trough. It’s happening again this year even as virus cases climb. But whether people from outside Italy – including foreign movie stars – would be able to attend was a matter of nail-biting uncertainty up until the last minute.
Just days before the Festival opened on September 1, the European Union proposed new travel restrictions for visitors to the EU from the United States, Israel, and other countries – potentially leading to quarantines that would cause visitors to miss most of the 11-day Festival.
In the first week of the Festival, Portugal and Sweden banned all visitors from five countries, including the US and Israel – vaccinated or not.
But so far Italy is keeping its doors open – cautiously. Last week it announced that only vaccinated visitors, those who recovered from the virus in the last six months, and people with a negative COVID-19 test would be admitted into the country.
And so the stars have arrived, in sleek motorboats and designer fashions, for the Festival’s 78th season.
Spritz o’clock
The heart of the Festival is the Palazzo del Cinema, built in the Modernist style in 1937. Next door is the Palazzo del Casino, built in 1938 in the Rationalist style and embellished with marble, mosaic, and Murano glass chandeliers in the colors of the sea. In contrast, the 2016 building that houses the Sala Giardino theater is a bright-red cube the exact shade of an iPhone.
These three buildings border a plaza built of dazzling white marble that serves as the Festival’s outdoor living room and looks out over the sparkling Adriatic. The plaza’s dotted with umbrella-shaded tables where journalists sip cappuccinos to brace themselves for 8 a.m. screenings. Although six o’clock is officially “spritz o’clock,” people drink fluorescent orange Aperol spritzes at all hours of the day.
The red carpet that runs along the front of the Palazzo del Cinema has been walled off from fans since the first pandemic Festival, to discourage crowding. But smallish crowds still gather around small gaps in the barrier, craning their necks for a view.
One of the best opportunities for star-watching is when the opening ceremony gets out and the celebrities stroll the short block from the Palazzo del Cinema to the Excelsior Hotel.
Cynthia Ervio, a member of the Venice jury, wore a form-fitting crystal-bedecked Versace dress with a hip-high split to display her thigh tattoos. She brought along her best guy friend to carry her glittering train.
Festival jurors also include Oscar-winning writer-directors Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) and Chloe Zhou. Zhou’s Nomadland premiered at Venice in 2020 and went on to win Venice’s Golden Lion prize. At the opening, Zhou wore a practical grey Fjallraven Kanken backpack over a comfortable-looking ankle-length floral dress.
Jury president Bong described the pandemic as a “test” that “showed the life-force of cinema.”
He added, “COVID will pass and cinema will continue.”
The opening ceremony was hosted by Italian actress Serena Rossi, who started the evening on a somber note by referencing the crisis in Afghanistan.
“My thoughts to Afghan mothers, to those skinny arms on the barbed wire; to mothers ready with an extreme gesture to separate from their children,” she said.
Other celebrities in attendance at the Festival this year include Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Tiffany Haddish, Kristen Stewart, Benedict Cumberbatch, siblings Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, Javier Bardem, Antonia Banderas, and Olivia Colman.
Oscar Isaac has been keeping busy. He’s at Venice representing two movies (Dune and Paul Shrader’s The Card Counter) and the HBO limited series Scenes from a Marriage.
COVID precautions
The Venice Film Festival takes COVID precautions seriously. Entry to the Festival grounds on the Lido – a long, thin island that shields the rest of Venice from the Adriatic – requires a temperature check and the presentation of immunization confirmation or an instant COVID test performed by the Italian Red Cross. Israel’s Green Pass is accepted, even though the QR code doesn’t work in Italy. Mask wearing is strictly enforced indoors, and many Festivalgoers also wear masks outdoors, especially in crowds.
All theater seats are pre-assigned, with half of them locked closed to enforce social distancing.
With seating so limited, tickets to the most popular movies were snapped up as soon as they become available. Trying to get a ticket became like playing a slot machine – constantly refreshing in hopes of snagging a fresh cancellation.
Parties at Venice have become smaller during the pandemic since a positive COVID test at a big Venice gala could mean quarantine for the stars in attendance and shut down movie productions for weeks.
What’s showing
Some 92 films, including both shorts and features, will screen at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The hottest ticket is for the $165 million, two-and-a-half-hour blockbuster Dune, which premiered here after long pandemic-related delays. Dune (technically Dune: Part One) has divided critics, with some praising its grandeur and others finding it excessively geeky and unresolved. The film will be released theatrically and on HBO Max on October 22.
Another highly anticipated premiere was The Power of the Dog – a 1920s Western starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and Jesse Plemons. It was written and directed by Jane Campion (The Piano), who last released a feature (Bright Star) in 2009.
First-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal premiered her film The Lost Daughter, a thriller-ish drama based on a novel by Italian writer Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend) and starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgaard.
Spencer, a film from Jackie director Pablo Larraín about Princess Diana, is already getting Oscar buzz for Kristen Stewart’s performance in the lead role. It’s likely to be wildly popular for those who can’t wait for the next season of The Crown.
Last Night in Soho is a psychological horror-thriller directed by Edgar Wright (Baby Driver) featuring Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit).
The Last Duel, a knights-in-armor epic by Ridley Scott (Gladiator) starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Adam Driver, will open near the end of the Festival.
Israeli connections
A few films at the Festival have Jewish and/or Israeli connections.
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is a documentary by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine about the Quebec-born Jewish poet/singer/songwriter and the song for which he’s best known.
Amira is a film by Egyptian director Mohamed Diab about the child of a Palestinian imprisoned in Israel and includes dialogue in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Israeli director Hagai Levi (In Treatment, Our Boys) is at Venice to introduce Scenes from a Marriage, a limited series for HBO that updates the original 1973 Swedish miniseries by Ingmar Bergman – and makes the husband character (played by Oscar Isaac) formerly Orthodox. Tovah Feldshuh plays his mother. The series will debut on September 12.
Planning for next year
You don’t need to be part of the film industry to attend the Venice Film Festival, and it offers the chance to see movies months before they arrive in Israeli cinemas. You might even spot a few stars.
Tickets from Israel to Italy are relatively inexpensive – about NIS 700 round trip if booked well in advance.
The five-star beachfront Excelsior Hotel, where many stars stay, is only a block from the red carpet in front of the Palazzo del Cinema. A more modest option is the two-star Villa Venice Movie, just a five-minute walk from the Festival.
The Festival offers deals on movie passes starting at 70 euros for university students and guests under 26 and over 60. Tickets to individual screenings are also available.
More information is on the Festival’s website.