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Venice 2021: all the godmothers (and godparents) of the Festival

Beauty, talent, empathy. These are the characteristics they have in common the godmothers – and the godparents – who have succeeded in over twenty years at the Venice Film Festival. Actresses, actors and models who have always brought their strong identity to the Lido. As it certainly will Serena Rossi who will open the 78a Exhibition on the evening of September 1st, on the stage of the Great Hall and will lead the closing ceremony on September 11th, when the Lions and other official prizes will be announced.

Serena Rossi is the twentieth godmother in the history of the Biennale del Cinema. To introduce this figure, who has the task of ferrying the public and the protagonists of the exhibition from the debut to the delivery of prizes, was in the 2000 the visionary and innovative director Marco Müller, that for that edition, the 57a, chose Chiara Caselli for the new role. A novelty then confirmed over the years by the current director Alberto Barbera, also because, as he wrote The European twenty years ago now, the Festival “is intertwined with the evolution of national costume in a tangle of film industry, entertainment, fashion and art”.

In the role of godmother, therefore, very different personalities and beauties have alternated in the last twenty years, which have characterized the edition of the Festival also with the choice of the look. And so here in 2009 the bursting Mediterranean charm of Maria Grazia Cucinotta, with her loose black hair and a daring décolleté in Roberto Cavalli animalier. Or the most sophisticated Isabella Ragonese, who in 2010 showed up in the Lagoon with a shirt, longuette and tie and waves to Farrah Fawecett. And still an unprecedented one Vittoria Puccini in the gypsy version in white Valentino in 2011, and the following year a very refined one Kasia Smutniak, always in Valentino but in a flowery pink.

Venice, of course, is not just a matter of style, but also of feelings and of dreams that sometimes come true. As in the case of Alessandra Mastronardi, hostess of the 76th edition in 2019, who said: “A few years ago I was invited to Venice and took my mother to the red carpet (her eyes sparkled like a child!). “Maybe one day you will be the godmother ”he went out. And I: “Yes, of course …”».

A parenthesis in this all-female journey was represented by the only two godparents in the history of the Festival, Alessandro Borghi in 2017 and Michele Riondino the following year.

For all (and all), it is now customary to kick off the great media event with one shooting barefoot, wearing a dream dress, on the shore of the Lido. A kind of baptism from which not even the godmother has escaped Anna Foglietta last year, the first in the history of the exhibition without an audience, under the banner of social distancing and the limitations made necessary by the pandemic Covid-19.

In his inaugural speech for what had been called the “zero edition” of the exhibition, that of the restart after the pandemic nightmare, Foglietta spoke of a future to be imagined and built. A message of hope that, as in a relay race, has chosen to collect this year’s godmother. “I know how hard it has been to smile over the past year and a half. But in this delicate moment, keeping alive and strong the desire to go back to doing what we know how to do, and to smile again, that’s all “, explained Serena Rossi, fresh from a year of success between cinema and television (the tv series Mina September and lo show Secret song). The actress hoped to “To find those forgotten smiles, I would like them to illuminate the cinemas and all the places of the Festival”.

In gallery above, all the godmothers (and godparents) of the Venice Film Festival who preceded it.

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