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Venice film festival: Italy's movie showcase bucks trend by physically going ahead

It’s a festival like no other in terms of its reputation for launching Oscar winners.

Birdman, Black Swan, Joker, The Shape of Water, Gravity, La La Land – the stars of these films launched their quest for the Academy Awards by shimmering on the red carpet at Venice in the late summer heat.

This year though, Venice is a festival like no other simply in terms of choosing to go ahead as a physical event after a summer where some of its main rivals, top-tier festivals such as Cannes and Telluride, had to be cancelled.

But there’ll be no screaming fans allowed near the red carpet, no queues for the best film tickets, as booking is online only, while temperature checks and masks will be enforced in half-full theatres.

But there will be stars.

British actress Tilda Swinton and American actor Matt Dillon are amongst a handful of high-profile names that are expected to walk a (socially distanced) red carpet.

Is it the return of the film festival, or the ghost of the old film festival?
"It’s certainly making us ask what the purpose of these kinds of events is," says Jason Solomons, a BBC Radio presenter and host of film podcast Seen Anything Good Lately? "Can we glamour our way out of COVID-19, or does asking questions of stars dressed in designer clothes seem a little tasteless these days?

“Perhaps Venice thinks that the magic of the movies will brush the cobwebs away, but the trouble is, you need a magical movie to do that. Movies about Hungarian truck drivers, for example, just aren’t going to cut it,” Solomans adds.
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