Alberto Barbera is looking to atone for past mistakes when he first took over as artistic director of the Venice Film Festival in 1999, and is now looking to change the tide, yet again, by relaunching the Venice Film Festival to growth.
Barbera has reshaped the Venice Film Festival and turned it into the smashing success it was always intended to be, and Barbera believes that Venice has surpassed Cannes in terms of the number of Oscar-nominated and Oscar- winning films that have premiered, and its clear to see that over the span of the last three years, 2022-2024, films that screened at Cannes have received 56 Oscar nominations winning 5, while Venice has received 77 winning 14.
“Cinema is the most modern art form, and we consider Venice to be of the utmost importance,” Italy’s Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano said, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, adding that Venice Film Festival “is an unparalleled international showcase that combines the beauty of Venice with the seventh art.”
“The first mistake I made was in 1999, the first time I was appointed Director, and that was to cancel the first attempt to build a market in Venice” Barbera said, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.” I was worried about the lack of space and I mistakenly thought that the Internet would take over and support the relationship between producers, sales agents, buyers and so on, which it didn’t. Film markets were growing at all the festivals, and Venice was the only one left without one. So we had to come up with a strategy,” Barbera recalls. That strategy would have to wait until 2012, when Baratta brought Barbera back as Artistic Director. By then, he was ready to implement his plans, and the Fondazione Biennale was willing to support him.
“First of all, I did a roadshow to convince the Americans, the studios and the majors to come back to Venice because they had stopped coming, preferring Toronto to the Lido. Then, I decided to reduce the number of films, focusing on quality instead of quantity. Third, I asked the Biennale to make major investments to renovate and restructure all the structures, all the places and venues we had, and to build new theaters. Finally, I worked hard to convince professionals and the film industry to come back to Venice instead of just going to Toronto. We needed producers, buyers, sales agents, distributors, in short, everyone involved in the film industry, and we managed to get them to come back to Venice.” When I ask him to describe the Festival in terms of business, Barbera smiles. “I would define it as a business that continues to grow, year after year, both in terms of prestige and numbers. Every year we register an increase in accreditations between 5 and 10%, more audiences, more professionals who participate in the festival. And the success of this event continues to grow.” He admits that without the support of the Biennale Foundation he wouldn’t be able to break even, and shares that “in some years Art or Architecture are more profitable and their surplus helps the Biennale contribute to our fixed cost budget.” In other words, the “central” takes from the richest sectors to help the neediest, with the profits from the Art Biennale going mainly to subsidize smaller events in theater, music and dance, but also cinema. Before leaving the Lido, I ask Barbera about the differences between Venice and Cannes. “I think the main difference is in the calendar, because Cannes is at the end of the old season, while Venice is at the beginning of the new one,” he says. “After all, the new season starts in September, which is also the beginning of the Oscar campaign for American cinema. And in recent years we’ve had more Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films than Cannes,”
You can read the entire interview on the Hollywood Reporter, and check it out in the video below:
