This entry is posted on number 36 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until September 2, 2025.
To its first edition of the Film Festival 900 films had been nominated. It looked like a hugeness to Alberto Barbera. “We said: how do we see them all?” It was 1999. This year the number went up to 4,500, of which 170 Italians. The overproduction of streaming has to do with it. But above all the artistic director himself has to do with him, who did in Venice what Amadeus did in Sanremo: he made The festival the most sought after for the debut of a workthe most prestigious launching pad for the premium season, including Oscars.
Born in 1950, of Occhieppo less than a few kilometers from Biella, the passion for cinema as a four and a half years old. From there certain teenage dreams: acting, directing, who have given way to career as a cinematographic critic to Gazzetta del Popolo. Then, the long collaboration with the Turin Film Festival, the first call to Venice and the second. Until now, to the starting tapes of the82nd editionwhere they are expected Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Emily Bluntthe latest works of Guillermo del ToroOf Jim Jarmusch and of Yorgos Lanthimos. “I am ready in the Russian mountains,” says Barbera laughing from his office to Lido. «The worst passed once passed the double Scoglio Scilla and Cariddi. Scilla: the selection of films, Cariddi: the calendar of screenings, and nobody has the idea of how complicated and harbinger of quarrels with half the world “, another frank laugh.
He still wonders: “Will we be able to see all the films to select”?
“No. The spirit is: Lancia in Resto A spron beaten! It starts in January, even if the big one arrives in the summer. The morning and afternoon are the projections, in the evening it is dedicated to answering hundreds of emails with questions and stresses. It is a conditioning, exclusive commitment, that puts me an anxiety that is difficult to explain ».
Try.
«Immediate decisions must be made, the tower game must be made. The yes De Coeur They are easy, the dry and indisputable no, despite the pressures. Doubts, on the other hand, are a problem: keeping a film firm means blocking his race in other festivals, but admitting it with reserve too soon means then sacrificing someone who arrives later. Result: sleepless nights that lead to nothing ».
After 16 editions, of which 12 consecutive, what is the film that led to the Lido to which it remains most fond?
“Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick. At the time I directed the Turin Festival: independent cinema, emerging authors, a small but successful reality. Then, I was called to Venice, even if I didn’t want to accept. First trip to work on the exhibition: in Los Angeles. First stop: to the studios of Warner Bros. there they told me they had a movie: the last of Kubrick. I couldn’t believe it: he had never gone to any event! Unfortunately, in the end, he couldn’t even come to Lido: he died a few months earlier. But they came Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruisewho moved on stage. I remember Bernardo Bertolucci’s beautiful speech at the opening ceremony in which he made self -criticism, because we cinephiles had snubbed Stanley’s works for a long time: they seemed too cold and brain ».
The film he refused and regretted?
“There is certainly, but I remove.”
What put in the wrong section of the Festival?
“Airopherm by Leonardo di Costanzo, unjustly out of competition in 2021, and I recognize it ».
This year the director is in competition, with Elisa.
“I expected it. He shot very late, mounting simultaneously, and delivered last days after the selection closure. It is the reconstruction of a manual case that makes you think about a current theme: reparative justice ».
How are the other Italian films among the 21 that contribute to the golden lion?
«The first I saw and invited was Duse. By Pietro Marcello I had loved Martin Eden. This is the complex and original portrait of a diva and an Italy both at sunset. The work was also proposed to Cannes, but the producer and the director decided not to wait for the answer and immediately accommodate the invitation for Venice. Under the clouds by Gianfranco Rosi is the result of three years in Naples, told in black and white, distancing the documentaries full of clichés we know. It is the profound authenticity that strikes. A well made movie Di Franco Maresco is his most personal work: he exhibits his obsessions, his inability to conclude the films, his malice towards the actors. It does so with an unbeatable self -irony. One of the friends who selected it with me called it “8th In Palermo ”. I don’t want to use the word testament, but it has that shape there».
And to finish the grace of Paolo Sorrentino, who opens the festival.
“He also arrived on the edge of the razor. It is an extraordinary return to the origins: the sequence plans and barbids of the last period have given way to the close -ups and the rigor of the consequences of love “.
Of the plot did not come out half a line. It is a reaction to the invasion of the spoilers, as is happening with The devil wears Prada 2?
“Absolutely. And then, revealing a single detail of history risks jeopardizing their unpredictability ».
“Our cinema has lost the ability to affect global imaginary as it once did.” These are the words of Luca Guadagnino on the sheet. Is it right?
«Italian production has grown exponentially and unmotivatedly: the traditional and platform market is unable to accommodate 250, 300 titles per year. The causes of this overproduction: aid from many sides, the economic availability of producers. That, they will not want to me, but in quantity it does not always correspond to quality. Therefore, most of the films
He self -heel ».
At what point is the crisis in the sector really in Italy?
«There are lights and shadows. The rules of tax credit and production support must be redefined. However, we have absolute excellence: great masters still in action – Marco Bellocchio to name one -, generations of the middle capable of guaranteeing the tinth when those who preceded them will retire, promising debuts that bode well ».
Few women remain.
«The trust of certain producers is missing, who still prefer to entrust the sets to men thinking that they are more capable to manage them. I trust in the acceleration of the change of mentality, in the turnover, in the positive influence of the areas in which gender equality already exists “.
Meanwhile, however, in the selection of the films that represent Italy at the exhibition there are works by all of authors. Republic He asked himself provocatively: “Are women without talent?”. «In recent years we have always had: in competition, jury presidents, rewarded. The festival cannot be accused of male chauvinism. The selection is like the harvest of the season. In this, less films than the usual Italians have arrived directed by women, and two or three candidates were not up to the other chosen. Since I don’t believe in pink quotas, on the contrary, I am convinced that they do not help the cause, the logic of quality prevailed ».
When did you fall in love with cinema?
«As a child. One Sunday afternoon, in my father, I entered the parish cinema room of my country where my uncle was a cashier. They gave a hood and sword movie. There was a voltage scene, I scared myself and asked to go out immediately. But at the same time those images exerted an incredible charm on me. At five, with my grandmother, I went to see the repertoire of Stanlio and Ollio, Modern times by Charlie Chaplin. Then the peplum came. I quarreled with my parents when I had to give up a first vision for a weekend in the mountains ».
The movie that saw the most?
“The wild pile by Sam Peckinpah and every time makes me cry. It is a late western, the genre I prefer, which collects the political instances of a particular moment in the late 1960s “.
What is the film that changed her and the company?
“Jules and Jim by François Truffaut. I saw him as a boy. He struck me how he unrupted the traditional idea of the couple and explained the importance of not locking relationships in suffocating cages. It was a hymn to build sincere relationships; to have an open and fluid attitude towards the world and life ».
His mandate will expire at the end of next year.
“I don’t think about it. Even if I can’t afford to stop working, with a family to keep and two small children. But assignments such as those at the exhibition cannot be requested or claimed, only accepted if offered. If the Biennale decides to change, it will not be right to complain about it ».
What wishes the cinema of the future?
«That he does not stop being original, to propose stories and languages in tune with the contemporary, to exercise the same power on young people to escape from reality and to know the world he has exercised on my generation. I learned more from the films than to the university, perhaps because I spent much more time in theaters until the last show than in the classrooms ».
How do you evaluate artificial intelligence?
“I understand that there are categories that feel threatened in their artistic autonomy, however, once regulated, the use of AI will become an extraordinary tool at the service of creativity. The cinema will benefit from it ».
If they should make a movie about her, who would like it to play it?
“Assuming it makes sense … my friend Steve of the house makes fun of me and calls me” George Clooney of the poor “. I wouldn’t mind that he was the one who dressed my clothes as an artistic director: he is so good and nice … I could also ask him in the next few days ».
Film education
1. A scene of the Wild pile by Sam Peckinpah (1969). LeftErnest Borgnine, William Holden, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson.
2. Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre and Oskar Werner in Jules and Jim by François Truffaut (1962).
3. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
4. Airopherm by Leonardo di Costanzo with Silvio Orlando (2021).
Departure, via
Alberto Barbera, 75 years old. Since 2012 he has been the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival. The 82nd edition opens on August 27 and will end on September 6th.
Photo Yara Nardi
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Source: Vanity Fair
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