2016 Venice Film Festival

Body text: As summer winds down, fashion is taking a breath. The Venice Film Festival is about to start followed shortly by the HFPA/InStyle Party at the Toronto Film Festival,and fresh trends should begin to surface.

Andrei Konchalovsky's РАЙ (Paradise) - winner of Venice’s Silver Lion for Best Director and  Russia’s submission in the foreign language film category of the Academy Awards - is, according to its director, writer and producer, a stern warning: ”History is full of great tragedies, most of which remain in our minds as ancient misdeeds that couldn’t possibly be replicated in the present day”, he says. “What has happened is a warning.

Venice is over but the jury’s decisions could well have positive reverberations for Hollywood and its award season. Although it remains to be seen if the Golden Lion winner The Woman Who Left (from the Philippines) will get a box office boost – the almost four hours in length kept even lots of journalists away – but the other prizes bode well for their recipients.

In a year when Hollywood had a massive presence on the Lido, smaller films from all corners of the world ended being selected by the jury for the top awards. The Golden Lion went to the Filipino revenge drama The Woman Who Left, by director Lav Diaz.

As we’ve been predicting, the stack heel is starting to dominate on the red carpet. The sensual stiletto will never disappear; it’s a classic, but watch for the chunky heel to become the shoe of choice as the year progresses, reaching dominance in 2017.

The 73rd Venice Film Festival officially ends on Saturday, September 10, with the presentation of the awards to this year's winners. But we're already saying arrivederci to the Lido, moving on to Toronto, the next big cinema get-together.

Buon giorno, John Porno. Past the festival midpoint viewers tend to get a little tired of Hollywood hype as well as artistic or pseudo-artistic international art faire.

Summer wanes and so does the 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival. The Lido will soon be back to its calm rhythms, as the movie circus decamps for further stops on the festival trail - Canada's Toronto International Film Festival, from September 8 to 18, Spain's San Sebastian, from 16 to 24; and, in October, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Golden Globe nominated director Pablo Larraín confirms that he is one of the brightest young talents in film making with the world premiere of his Jackie, which screened in competition on the Lido. The Chilean director has a gift for casting an oblique light of famous lives – witness the excellent Neruda, which was just screened in Cannes, on the life of his famous countryman and poet.

Director John Landis came to the Lido with his wife, costume designer and curator Deborah Nadoolman to present the first ever look at the restored version of his 1981 beloved horror classic An American Werewolf in London at the Venice Film Festival. The film is the story of two American college students, Jack (Griffin Dunne) and David (David Naughton) backpacking through Britain when a large wolf attacks them.