Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera unveiled the lineup for the 83rd edition on Thursday, his 19th selection over two terms in the position, first from 1998-2001 and most recently since 2012, with his term extended to 2027 and 2028 earlier this year.
It presented a diverse and politically engaged cast with leading female competitors including South Korean director Lee Chang-dong potential love, Hirokazu Koreeda Look backMartin McDonagh Wild Horse Nine And Lance Oppenheim Peak time Starring Robert Pattinson.
Background talking points include the absence of studios and the dearth of female-oriented films in competition.
Deadline caught up with Barbera in the wake of the announcement to get some insight into the challenges and motivations as he puts this year’s casting together.
Delivery time: I received a record 4,500 applications this year. Were there any dominant themes or trends?
Alberto Barbera: Yes, that’s obvious, you’ll see it when you watch the films, but even a quick glance at the titles makes you realize that in some ways, this is the most political edition ever, in the broadest sense, because it deals with the big, complex problems of the contemporary era: wars, Palestine, Putin’s Russia, Ukraine, climate change, migration, social conflicts, shrinking space for freedom of expression, violence against regime opponents. But also the crisis of the institution of family and school and the lack of future for young adolescents. In short, these are all the worst things we are experiencing in one of the most disastrous periods in modern world history.
Movies are kind of Raisoni catalogue From all these problems, not by choice, but because today’s filmmakers are like a sponge that absorbs problems, imagines them, reformulates them, and then presents stories that help us understand reality better, and provide us with the tools necessary to understand the real complexity of the problems, and not just the news that we see in newspapers or on television.
Delivery time: In this turbulent time, Venice has never shied away from showing challenging films. Last year, I chose the drama Gaza Hind Rajab’s voice At a time when many festivals seemed to avoid showing films related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What drives this?
Barbera: This is because the Venice Biennale (the festival’s parent body) is one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. Fortunately, we operate with complete independence, thanks in part to President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, who has maintained a position of absolute toughness and consistency, even in the face of the unprecedented political pressure we have received this year.
Delivery time: Do you mean the storm over Russia’s participation in the Art Biennale, which led to the European Union withdrawing its funding?
Barbera: One could disagree with the situation that arose, but the Biennale was unable to do anything because the pavilion was owned by Russia and Russia simply announced that it would return. The Biennale had no legal or judicial means to prevent this.
Delivery time: But didn’t the Biennale invite Russia to return to the Art Biennale?
Barbera: The Biennale does not invite anyone. He organizes an exhibition and entrusts it to a curator who selects the artists. But there are wings that are owned by individual countries, and they do whatever they want. However, the biennale has maintained a firm and consistent stance, saying: “We are a cultural institution, and we have no bias against artists of any kind.” We are a place of exchange, discussion and freedom of expression, and this position must be firmly maintained until the end.
This also applies to the selections we made for the film festival. We are not closed towards anyone, but we are open and impartial towards all artists. Then the fact that most of the films were politically and socially relevant, and relevant to the whole world, is a trend in contemporary auteur cinema that we cannot ignore.
Delivery time: In fact, there are a few films directed by Russians that have been selected this year – such as Julia Loktev’s film My Unwanted Friends: Part Two – ExileIlya Krzanovsky Dao And Victor Kosakovsky Holy wood dust. But I think they’re all by maverick filmmakers.
Barbera: And even there, that’s not an option, in the sense that there haven’t been any films by Russian directors who weren’t dissidents… The Russian dictatorship is such that no one in Russia now dares to make an anti-Putin film. People are fleeing Russia, and turning to the West, if they want to carry out counterintelligence against Putin, as described in My Unwanted Friends: Part Two – Exile. The journalists in the documentary had to flee Russia before Putin arrested them.
Today, no one would finance a film critical of the Russian government or politics outside of Russia. If one had been presented, we would have invited him… but that’s the approach we take with all films, whatever their source. I’ve said this many times, albeit briefly, but we only judge on the quality of an individual film, not on its genre, or whether it was made by a man or a woman, or on its politics or origins.
Delivery time: This leads to another aspect of this year which is the fact that there was only one film directed by a woman – May Al-Toukhi Unknown woman – Is he in contention for 21 titles this year? What’s going on here?
I don’t think it can be objectively said that Venice has a negative attitude towards women. From 2020 to date, the Venice Film Festival has awarded more films by women than any other festival in the world, including Cannes and Berlin. We’ve had a lot of female jury foremen. This year, women will preside over all three juries.
I would give anything to have more female-oriented films in the main competition. But there is another aspect as well, which is that the percentage of feature films presented by women this year reached 24%, compared to 30% last year. It’s a counter-trend compared to recent years when the number of films directed by women has increased.
This year it decreased. i don’t know why. It is inexplicable because the pursuit of gender equality seemed like an unstoppable trend. Instead, the number of films decreased, and unfortunately the quality of the films decreased as well. It is possible that the budgets available for films have decreased. I don’t know. It is difficult to explain some production dynamics that are beyond our control.
Delivery time: Another absence is the absence of major studio films, which has been a trend across European festivals this year. Do you think Hollywood is withdrawing from the festival scene for good?
Barbera: If you look closely at the published predictions on deals for movies that could be in Venice in the past few months, you’ll find that there are very few studio films. There was (Alejandro Gonzalez) Iñárritu diggerwhich Warner Bros. announced. Immediately she did not want to participate in the festival for marketing reasons. Aaron Sorkin movieSocial account) wasn’t finished because they had to reshoot the sequences in August and so it wouldn’t be ready for the Venice movie. David Fincher movieThe Adventures of Cliff Booth), which at one point seemed certain to be a contender for Venice, was hit with production delays because Fincher, due to a personal issue, halted post-production and accumulated delays that meant the film wasn’t ready. I have been in constant contact with Denis Villeneuve (online). Sand Dunes: Part Three), who told me, “We’re very far from finishing the movie. The movie is coming out at Christmas, and we’ll be ready a little before then.”
It’s also fair to say that studios are going through a complicated time, merging and redefining production strategies and earning less… In short, a whole series of things. Sure, studios are wondering how to promote films… but again I don’t want to jump to conclusions and say that from now on, studios won’t go to festivals because it’s not worth it, it costs too much.
Delivery time: Another film that got away with it was Luca Guadagnino’s industrial. We were hoping Neon would fire it in the gun After the film was filmed in June…
Barbera: Me too. The movie is beautiful. I spoke at length with Tom Quinn, and he told me that the film would not be released until January. “We will do a technical release in December to qualify it for the Oscars, as often happens, but we can’t release it before that; we don’t want to release it too early,” he said. “We have to sell the film. We paid a high price. We have to sell the rest of the world. We need time to achieve success. So we decided not to do any festivals.”
