On "Nomadland" and other Venice winners
Monday, September 14, 2020 at 12:20PM Please welcome guest contributor Elisa Giudici. She saw all the Venice competition films and she brings us this special report!
By Elisa Giudici
The oldest Film Festival of the world was the first to roar back from the pandemic. Venice International Film Festival president Francesco Ciccutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera worked hard to organize this year's edition. At first, it played like a fever dream: an international film festival in one of the nations that lived through the most severe lockdowns and highest death count just a few months ago?
Hollywood majors and newer realities like Netflix, which in the recent past Venice would coddle with attention, betrayed the Venetian Mostra, and didn't send a single movie. Old friends rallied, though. Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Ann Hui, and Abel Ferrara wanted to be in Venice to help the Mostra. They were supported by European festivals early on in their filmmaking and didn't forget them in their time of need...