2019 Venice Film Festival

In 1983, Venice Festival director Gianluigi Rondi deemed Dark Habits, the debut film by a young Spanish director, “obscene”. Now, 36 years later, said Spanish director laughingly reminded the audience of that fact when he picked up the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in directing at the 76th Venice International Film Festival.

Any major festival worthy of the name has its controversies and this year’s Mostra del Cinema (the official name of the Venice Festival) has Roman Polanski. Ever since the selection of his J’Accuse was announced last month in the official competition, it has predictably been controversial.

The stars are starting to blossom on the Lido carpet like blooms in spring. Tight tubes of material were the preference, with belts becoming a thing.

Venice 2019 is hot. Very hot indeed - and we're not talking about the quality of the films on offer, or the usual debates and controversies: temperatures are spectacularly high.

“Festivals are in the natural order of free and open societies,” said Biennale president Paolo Baratta during the festival opening ceremony from the stage of the Sala Grande. His auspices – and the implication that film festivals might be needed today more than ever - were well received by the elegant crowd that packed the theater.

Claes Bang made his breakthrough in the Golden Globe-nominated The Square and since then the 52-year old Dane has been on a roll. Currently, he is in Venice representing Italian filmmaker Guiseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, which will be closing the film festival on September 7.

Ladies were luminous on the opening night of the Venice Film Festival.

As the 76th edition of the Venice film festival is about to kick off tomorrow, there is a lot to contemplate for guests, reviewers and organizers alike. The competition choices as a whole look promising and are sure to generate interest, even though there is no single film that sticks out quite yet, as it had been the case when lineups were announced in previous years featuring such titles as Gravity, A Star Is Born, or Roma.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced a returning initiative in which rising filmmakers from the 2019 Venice International Film Festival and the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival will be selected for a three-week residency program in partnership with Film Independent. For the second year in a row, the HFPA and Film Independent will host a three-week program geared at emerging and mid-career filmmakers selected from the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival and the TIFF Filmmaker Lab.