Venice 81: Is it right that many of the films at the Festival last more than two hours?

If you attended the presentation of the 81st program Venice Film Festival you will have realized that the director Alberto Barbera he insisted a lot on a topic that we debate very little: the length of the films. Barbera at a certain point even makes a joke about the press that will be present at the Lido because they will have to understand well how to manage their hours in order to be able to endure screenings of films that happily exceed three hours in length. In Venice, this year, there will be many long or very long films: from The Brutalist by Brady Corbet, which lasts a whopping 215 minutes, to the documentary Israel Palestine on Swedish TV by Göran Olsson which lasts 202, passing through Maldodor by Fabrice du Welz (155 minutes). We are about to write something strong, I realize that: The length of a film or novel does not always correspond to a higher quality.

Leaving aside the fact that films like Killers of the Flower Moon And The Irishman they are beautiful and, to be fully appreciated, they need to be seen at the cinema because nowadays the cinema is one of the very few places where we force ourselves (if all goes well) not to look at our phones, some people think that today the public should be educated to long durations, and we can even agree, only that not all films and books need so many minutes and pages to reach a complete form. Sometimes it seems like you want to dilute the broth just for fun, forgetting that true talent lies in the one who manages to tell a story in a very limited time (this is the reason why fairy tales have always left their mark, even if they have always been labelled as second-rate literature).

There are short films like Strange Way of Life by Pedro Almodóvar or The pupils by Alice Rohrwacher who manage to condense the heart of a story in less than 40 minutes, just as there are wonderful novels like Winter by Dario Voltolini – published by La Nave di Teseo and runner-up at the 2024 Strega Prize – which, in 144 pages, bewitch and hypnotize. We will continue to watch Gone With the Wind several times a year because it is an authentic masterpiece, we agree, but we will also continue to appreciate the truly brave: those who give birth to works that work and do not falter without watering down or getting lost uselessly. This year, in Venice, there will also be, for example, the new film by a master like Takeshi Kitano – Broken Rage – That It lasts just 62 minutes and is a 20-minute short film directed by Marco Bellocchio – If I may – Chapter II – demonstrating that, when a director has a great deal of experience and a solid story in his hands, two hundred minutes are not needed to convince the audience of his strength.