The Film Verdict interviews the director of the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
THE FILM VERDICT: In your introduction to the 80th Venice Film Festival, you use a quotation from Bernardo Bertolucci’s far-sighted 1964 film Before the Revolution —“We went to bed at night knowing that we’d wake up in the future” – to gaze into what lies ahead for the Mostra. Your conclusion, based on this year’s selection process, seems basically optimistic. What is it about this moment in time that has stimulated filmmakers to give their best? Is it the very challenges they face? Is world cinema at a turning point?
ALBERTO BARBERA: I’m resolutelyly optimistic, despite all those (and there are more than a few) who prophesy the imminent death of cinema. There will never be a shortage of films, even if the cinema changes, and it is destined to change even more with the rise, for example, of the unprecedented innovations that AI will bring in the immediate future. This is the real turning point and the film industry is going to have to come to grips with it very soon. If the switch from analog to digital took some fifteen years to complete, the transformation in the way films are written and shot in the immediate future will be much faster and more radical. Because AI is already here and working, it doesn’t need to be perfected or for standard procedures to be created. All that is missing is regulation, which is one of the most important demands put forward by the strikers.
I don’t know what stimulated the creativity of the filmmakers, which is at the heart of the (apparently) high quality of the films in this year’s program. But it’s true that, generally speaking, situations of uncertainty and difficulty are a stimulus for directors. I am referring to the extremely serious problems afflicting the contemporary world: the growing military conflict, the challenge of climate change, the epochal phenomenon of migration and the psychological and social uncertainty it causes. Artists are sensitive antennae able to perceive the deepest unease and translate it into stories that are highly faithful and representative mirrors of this moment.
THE FILM VERDICT: Art-house and independent cinema – the kind of ambitious, quality movies that Venice screens – sometimes seems to be separated from commercial cinema – the superhero franchises, the repetitive genre films – by a high wall. At other times it is amazing to see mega-hits like Barbie and Oppenheimer break through with the style and intelligence of festival films. Does the future hold more of this type of crossover? What role do festivals like Venice play in pushing producers to aim higher and risk more?
ALBERTO BARBERA: The contraposition between auteur films and commercial cinema is a simplification that has never existed in a reductive form. The entire history of cinema can be summed up in the attempt to find an (im)possible reconciliation between these two opposites (the “perfect formula” referred to by David Thomson in his book on Hollywood.) It’s nonetheless true that we often see examples of films that seem inspired by a crossover logic. I believe it depends on the fact that, on one hand, the very survival of auteur cinema relies on the ability to find a language able to create a dialogue with much larger audiences than those addressed in the past. And, thus, to cut out a space for survival within the apparently narrower limits of the mass culture industry. On the other hand, the search for ever-higher quality in movies aimed at wide audiences ends up bringing this type of product closer to the ambitions of directors who aren’t satisfied with repeating simple formulas for success. So it seems fairly obvious to me that we can expect to see more and more productive processes that can be defined as “crossovers”, even if it’s more complicated than that.
THE FILM VERDICT: So many wars, revolutions, pandemics, economic and climate disasters. So many smart films about history and politics and human rights. Can cinema really change the world?
ALBERTO BARBERA: Cinema can’t change the world. But films can help widen our knowledge and refine our sensibilities. In this sense, they make an important contribution to creating the conditions for an ever-growing pool of knowledge, which is the indispensable premise to imagining a better future.
