On the first day of the 2023 Venice Film Festival, a pigeon went viral after walking the red carpet. It was an unusually quiet opening night for the typically star-studded showcase—Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, which had been due to open the historic 80th edition, had dropped out as a result of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and so, instead of its stars Zendaya and Josh O’Connor striking a pose, we had photographers clamoring to capture a bird taking flight.
Four days later, I went to an early screening of Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, on the Lido—a surreal sci-fi romance set across multiple time periods, in which a pigeon appears repeatedly as an ominous harbinger of death. Wait, I thought, was that first pigeon a portentous symbol of things to come? Was Venice dead? A week later—after a flurry of premieres, press conferences, and parties—it became clear that it wasn’t, though it wasn’t quite the same either. Below, we present an outline of everything you might have missed at Venice.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes loomed large
As was to be expected, the current stalemate keeping Hollywood at a standstill was at the forefront of attendees’ minds. Venice’s jury president for the main competition, Damien Chazelle, set the tone from the very first day, sporting a “Writers Guild on Strike” T-shirt and badge at the opening press conference, alongside his fellow jury members Martin McDonagh and Laura Poitras, last year’s recipient of the Golden Lion for her powerful Nan Goldin documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. “Today is the 121st day the writers have been on strike and the 48th the actors have been on strike,” Chazelle noted. “I think there is a basic idea that each work of art has value unto itself, and is not only a piece of content to be put into a pipeline. That basic idea has been eroded in the past years. That’s the core issue for me. That issue of residuals and people being remunerated for each piece of art is key. A lot of people who would ordinarily be here aren’t able to be here. It’s a difficult time, particularly for crews and writers in Hollywood.”
The following day, Adam Driver—whose new film, Ferrari, had received a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement which allowed him to walk the red carpet and promote the drama at the festival—weighed in at another press conference, adding: “I’m very happy to be here to support this movie and the truncated schedule that we had to shoot it and the efforts of all the incredible actors working on it and the crew. But also I’m very proud to be here to be a visual representation of a movie that’s not part of the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers]. The other objective is obviously to say, why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon and STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for… but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t? And every time people from SAG go and support a movie that has met the terms of the interim agreement, it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people they collaborate with, and the others are not.” Touché.
Both visual and verbal echoes of support continued right up until the end of the festival. Jessica Chastain, who was promoting Michel Franco’s Memory on the penultimate day of the showcase, attended her press conference in a “SAG-AFTRA on Strike” T-shirt. “I was incredibly nervous to be here today, and actually there are some people on my team who advised me against it,” the actor admitted. “I’m very aware of how lucky I am. It’s a wonderful profession that we get to do as actors and because of that we are quite often made to feel like we have to keep quiet in order to protect future working opportunities. We are often told and reminded how grateful we should be. That is the environment that I think has allowed workplace abuse to go unchecked for many decades, and it’s also the environment that has saddled members of my union with unfair contracts. I am here because SAG-AFTRA has been explicitly clear that the way to support the strike is to post on social media, walk the picket lines, and to work and support interim agreement projects. It’s what our national board, our negotiating committee, and elected leadership has asked us to do. When indie producers sign these agreements they are letting the world know, they are letting the AMPTP know, that actors deserve fair compensation, that AI protections should be implemented, and there should be sharing of streaming revenue. So I hope being here today encourages other producers, encourages actors, to show up. Hopefully we’ll see an end to the strike soon and hopefully the AMPTP will go back to the table.”
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A string of fashion-focused events upped the glamour quotient—and brought out the stars
Barring Driver, Chastain and Jacob Elordi—who was on the Lido for the premiere of Priscilla, which had also received an interim agreement—there was a distinct lack of A-listers on the official Venice Film Festival red carpet, though many did make appearances in the city over the festival period while attending a host of fashion-centric events, from Giorgio Armani’s One Night Only runway show and Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales dinner to the DVF Awards—the likes of Venice stalwart Sophia Loren, Sydney Sweeney, Emma Corrin, and Amal Clooney, who posed elegantly on water taxis, stepped onto jetties in showstopping ball gowns, or made headlines for going pantless. It never reached the dizzying highs of 2022, certainly (Timothée Chalamet in a shiny red halterneck; Florence Pugh managing a work crisis like a pro, spitgate, et al), but we were grateful nonetheless.
Beyond that, there were some bizarre red carpet moments
The only thing that could top that pigeon moment on day one? The provocative filmmaker Harmony Korine (the director of Spring Breakers and the writer behind the cult 1995 film Kids), who was debuting Aggro Dr1ft, an experimental action film shot entirely in infrared, arrived on the red carpet wearing a demon mask. Flanked by the film’s visual effects artist Joao Rosa and Eric Kohn, the head of film strategy and development at Korine’s company, the director puffed on a cigar and when asked about his look, joked: “We’re wearing the masks because they’re comfortable. It’s giving me a scalp massage.” It was odd, to say the least. When it premiered, the film prompted mass walkouts as well as a lengthy standing ovation.
…and even more bizarre press conferences
This surreal, otherworldly mood prevailed when it came to the press conferences, too. On day two of the festival, Caleb Landry Jones, the Texas-born actor and star of X-Men: First Class and Get Out, arrived at the press conference for his new film, Luc Besson’s Dogman, speaking in a Scottish accent. Besson introduced his lead, adding that the accent was for a new role which Landry Jones is currently in the midst of shooting and that it was important for him to “stay in character” while in Venice. “It will be better in the film,” the actor added of his accent. Bonkers.
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Controversy swirled
Besson wasn’t the only controversial director to have a film premiering on the Lido, of course—there was also Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, and none of the trio had a particularly easy ride. Dogman, the tale of a Joker-esque outsider who loves dogs, bombed, as did Polanski’s satire The Palace. Allen’s domestic thriller Coup de Chance fared better, though was overshadowed by protests and an interview the director gave to Spain’s El Mundo in which he defended the former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales, who came under fire for kissing footballer Jenni Hermoso at the World Cup final. “The kiss on the soccer player was wrong, but it did not burn down a school,” Allen said. “He has the duty to apologize and go ahead... they didn’t hide, nor did he kiss her in a dark alley. He wasn’t raping her, it was just a kiss and she was a friend. What’s wrong with that? In any case, it is difficult to understand that a person can lose their job and be penalized in that way for kissing someone.”
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If that wasn’t enough, there was also the matter of Gabriel Guevara, the Spanish actor who was arrested on day four of the festival on alleged sexual assault charges. Venice’s organizers confirmed the news but clarified that the 22-year-old was not “linked to any events or productions related to the 80th Venice Film Festival” in an official capacity.
Emotions ran high
Yes, Venice premieres have a long history of being teary—who could forget Brendan Fraser breaking down in tears during The Whale’s standing ovation last year—but this year’s edition took the biscuit: Adam Driver got teary-eyed during the standing ovation for Ferrari; Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard wiped away tears as the audience clapped for Memory; Priscilla Presley herself cried at the end of Priscilla; and Leonard Bernstein’s kids broke down after watching Bradley Cooper’s reimagining of their father’s life in Maestro. In one of the festival’s most heartwarming moments, the latter also mimicked Leonard Bernstein’s conducting as the credits rolled to his music.
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Global crises were addressed
Tears were also shed during a spate of films that shone a light on the European migrant crisis, from Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano, which tracks two Senegalese teenagers trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, to Agnieszka Holland’s The Green Border, which centers on refugees who find themselves trapped in the exclusion zone between Poland and Belarus. The latter prompted Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, one of the politicians name-checked and criticized in the film, to compare it to Nazi propaganda. Holland, in turn, demanded a public apology and threatened to take legal action against him. The other humanitarian crisis that dominated conversation? The situation in Iran, with jurors and festival attendees forming a flash mob on the red carpet on day four of the festival to show their solidarity with the Iranian people as well as Iranian filmmakers who are being silenced and imprisoned for continuing to work.
The festival’s winners included a smattering of surprises
On Saturday, September, 9, the final day of the festival, the 80th edition’s winners were announced. Yorgos Lanthimos, widely tipped to take home the Golden Lion for his madcap coming-of-age saga Poor Things, did indeed land the top prize, with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist securing the runner-up’s Grand Jury Prize, and Agnieszka Holland the Special Jury Prize, Venice’s third most prestigious award, for The Green Border. Meanwhile, the Silver Lion for best director went to Matteo Garrone for Io Capitano and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best emerging performer to its star, Seydou Sarr.
However, the main acting prizes provided bigger surprises. Mads Mikkelsen had been expected to take home the Volpi Cup for best actor for his role in the historical epic The Promised Land, but he was pipped to the post by Peter Sarsgaard for Memory; and despite a stacked best actress race, it was Cailee Spaeny who was ultimately victorious for Priscilla. Expect their awards season campaigns to kick into high gear this autumn, as we inch ever closer to the 2024 Oscars.
