By Liza Foreman
The Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido has long been a focal point for delegates and stars gathered for the annual Venice International Film Festival.
For the 80th edition of the festival this week, the beach hotel which houses both the Venice Production Bridge film market and the Italian Pavilion was less about glitz, and more about business, with the Lido’s star turnout impacted by the ongoing Hollywood strikes.
Inside the Italian Pavilion, this year’s lineup of conferences and talks was well attended. It helped create a pavilion space that Italo exec Roberto Stabile calls: “A place where the Italians must feel at home and all others must feel at home in Italy.
“What we say is that the pavilion is ‘Casa Italia’. It’s very important for us. We create the conditions to support work for our professionals. At the same time, we organize meetings with foreign delegations, and there are conferences,” he said.
Stabile and his colleagues have been in the news this week with the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with Hong Kong.
“The memo aims to help the distribution of Italian films, as well as future collaboration with the special administrative region of China.” Stabile added: “It’s not always easy to work with China due to political, cultural and economic difficulties.”
As part of the agreement, Italy will hold an ‘Italian Screens’ exhibition this year from November 23-27 in Hong Kong.
The ‘Italian Screens’ is a global initiative that presents the best Italian films, released in the past year, with the help of its regional embassies and ambassadors to help find local distribution for its films. Italian Screens (New Italian Cinema Goes Abroad) aims to strengthen existing distribution networks and open new territories to Italian films.
The Hong Kong deal is the big announcement for Italy, but a major push to promote Italy’s film industry worldwide continues, overseen by Stabile.
Italian Screens and the Italy Film Distribution Fund, which supports the distribution of Italian films overseas, are high on the list of Stabile’s priorities.
“We are pushing Italian Screens,” he said. “Wherever Italy has an embassy, we organize the showing of new films, screen in cinemas, invite local distributors, and show that local people like our films. It’s important to help and support Italian movies from all over the world. It started a year and a half ago in India; anywhere there is an Italian embassy or ambassador.”
In June this year, Italy hosted the Audiovisual Producers Summit in Trieste, where leading U.S. producers and studio executives, and their French counterparts were invited to meet with Italian producers and industry figures.
Italy was the guest of honor at the Guadalajara Film Festival the same month. In October, a delegation of Italian producers will be attending the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Tokyo is planning a retrospective of Franco Zeffirelli’s films to mark the 100th anniversary of the legendary Italian director’s birth.
In July, Italy signed a film co-production agreement with Japan. Italy has also been selected as the country of honor at next year’s European Film Market at the Berlinale. ‘Italy in Focus’ will put the spotlight on Italian filmmakers and provide further opportunity to network with film business execs in Berlin at the EFM.
Meanwhile, Italy has a strong line up in Venice this year, with a half dozen films in competition, including Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino, and starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, which opened the festival.
Italo titles vying for the Golden Lion include Enea, Pietro Castellitto’s second feature film, starring Benedetta Porcaroli; Saverio Costanzo’s Finalmente L’ Alba, starring Lily James and Willem Dafoe, with James portraying an aspiring actress in 1950s Cinecittà; Edoardo De Angelis’s Comandante; Giorgio Diritti’s novel adaptation Lubo; Matteo Garrone’s Lo Capitano, which tells the story of two Africans on their way to Europe; Stefano Sollima’s Adagio, a story of revenge and redemption, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, and Adriano Giannini.
The Italian industry has been growing thanks, in part, to a 40 percent tax credit program, which helps an estimated 200-plus Italian films get made each year.
As for business in Venice this year: “It used to be that people would come here to get the red-carpet attention for the film and then do deals in Toronto later,” Stabile affirmed. “It’s not so bad this year. People are here just for business. It’s not people waiting for the big stars and taking pictures. Everyone is here for business.”
