Venice Chief Alberto Barbera on Hollywood’s Festival Retreat, Gender Parity Backslide and the AI Question

Artistic Director Alberto Barbera unveiled the lineup for the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Thursday, and, as ever, there is no shortage of auteur firepower headed for the Lido.

The competition slate includes Primetime, starring and produced by Robert Pattinson; Bunker, with Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem; Ink, featuring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy; and The Echo Chamber, led by Alicia Vikander. There are also hotly anticipated new features from Martin McDonagh (Wild Horses Nine), Lee Chang-dong (Possible Love) and Werner Herzog (Bucking Fastard).

But compared with last year — when Jacob Elordi, Dwayne Johnson, Emma Stone, George Clooney and Julia Roberts helped turn Venice into a red-carpet supernova — the wattage is noticeably dimmer. The lineup is also light on Hollywood studio fare, continuing a troubling pattern seen this year in Berlin and Cannes: the majors are increasingly ghosting the big festivals.

Equally glaring is the gender imbalance. Of the 20 films in competition, just one — May El-Toukhy’s Danish drama Woman Unknown — has a female director. Nearly a decade after Barbera signed the 50/50 by 2020 pledge to improve representation for women filmmakers at Venice, the numbers offer little evidence of progress.

In a wide-ranging conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Barbera addressed the studio slowdown, Venice’s gender-parity setback and whether AI-made films may have a future on the festival circuit.

Pretty good. Actually, I’m exhausted already. Now I have to work on the screening schedule. Everybody wants to play on the first weekend, which is impossible. Then we have actors who have obligations and commitments because they are on set somewhere and can only come for 20-24 hours. It’s extremely complicated and difficult. Just endless discussion. Over the next two weeks we’ll redo the schedule several times. It’s a nightmare. The worst part of my job.

Well congratulations at least in finalizing the lineup. What are you most proud of in your selection this year?

The fact that the combination of films is both big names and young talents. We have newcomers from all over the world. Which of course is part of our mission, to reflect world cinema. But this year is much more varied than previous years. There are a lot of discoveries, a lot of newcomers. In the main competition we only have nine films from filmmakers who attended Venice before. The others are completely new to the main competition. Some of them are pretty young, and very talented.

We also have a lot of documentaries, very strong documentaries, more than usual, this year. They are so strong and very relevant and I think they will have an impact. We gave up the idea of screening many TV series this year, also because, from a quality point of view, they weren’t so interesting. We prefer to show more documentaries.

One thing I noticed was, like at other big festivals this year, there aren’t many big studio movies.

No, no big studio films. Because they aren’t available. The only [studio movie] we were hoping to land in Venice was the [Alejandro G.] Iñárritu film with Tom Cruise [Digger]. But Warner Brothers decided not to do any festival and to release the film at the beginning of October, skipping all the festivals. That their marketing strategy. There was no room to discuss it with them.

But there were no other big studio films available in time. The films the trades have been speculating about in the last two or three months simply weren’t ready. Alan Sorkin’s film [The Social Reckoning] is not ready. They decided to reshoot some sequences in August, so the film won’t be ready in time for Venice. David Fincher’s film [Brad Pitt-starrer The Adventures of Cliff Booth], which is highly anticipated, for us too, isn’t ready because Fincher had to pause for personal reasons. It has been slightly postponed and will be probably ready in October, but not in time for for Venice.

But there were no other major disappointments because the films weren’t ready. Can you name a single film from a studio that was ready and is not in Venice? Of course Dune 3 isn’t ready. It’ll be released around Christmas.

The problem isn’t that the studios chose not to bring their films to Venice, the films simply aren’t finished. I wouldn’t say it’s a trend that the studios are skipping the festivals. It’s a temporary situation, the result of the film production schedule that the big festivals like Cannes and Venice don’t have access to.

Next year we’ll see. Maybe the studio will come back to the festival. Or maybe not. Because we do know that all the studios are re-thinking their marketing strategies, because marketing films has become more complicated and more difficult. If you have a blockbuster, if you have a Tom Cruise film, it’s easy. You release the film and the people come. With other movies it’s more difficult because the traditional marketing tools don’t work anymore and they are still building the new tools. So we will see what happens.

As marketing strategies change, does that change the role a festival like Venice plays in the industry?

I don’t see any big changes in the near future. The future, by definition of course, is unpredictable. But I can’t see a big revolutionary change in the role of the festivals. If the big Hollywood movies decide to skip the festivals, we will work to improve our role in promoting independent films, new talents, and new filmmakers — auteur cinema from around the world. Which is part of our mission and something we’ve always done. Maybe we will just be doing more of that.

One film I was surprised not to see in the lineup was Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial. Was that ready? Did you screen it?

Yes. I saw the film. I love the movie. I think it’s a great, great movie. The only problem was Neon only bought it a few weeks ago [after Amazon MGM dropped the film]. I had a long discussion with [Neon boss] Tom Quinn. He said he was very sorry. He sees the film as a strong contender for the Oscars next year. But they won’t be ready to release the movie until early 2027. They’ll do a release in December to qualify for the Oscar but they aren’t ready yet. I think that the film was probably quite expensive for them. They spent a lot of money to buy the film. Now they need to sell it all over the world and they don’t want [to premiere] the film before selling it everywhere. So they decided to skip the fall festivals [for] a straight commercial release. It’s unfortunate because the film is really, really good.

You and the Venice festival tend to stay above the fray when it comes to political discussions, but in his comments today, Biennale chairman Pietrangelo Buttafuoco made a very political statement, slamming the decision by the European Commission to withdraw a €2 million ($2.3 million) grant to the Biennale’s arts exhibition. Mr. Buttafuoco suggested the loss of the grant could impact the Venice festival, particularly on funding for the Biennale College and the Venice Production Bridge programs. Is that the case?

Luckily enough, no. The decision by the European Community will not impact the Venice production bridge or the Biennale College. It was supposed to be €2 million over three years, so it means less than €700,000 [$796,211] a year, which we can cover with our own budget. I wouldn’t say we are not worried. We are. We are sad and frustrated by the decision, which is just a matter of politics and unacceptable.

It’s well known that you and Mr. Buttafuoco don’t share the same politics. [Buttafuoco is a right-wing writer and journalist.] But you seem to work very well together. How do you manage that, despite the political differences I assume are there?

Of course they are. Everybody knows that, it’s not a secret. But it’s actually very simple. He is extremely, extremely respectful of my autonomy as artistic director of the festival. He never interferes in my choices. He is one of the most respectful men I have ever worked with. It’s very easy working with him. This is the opinion of everybody working at the Biennale. He has succeeded in creating a space where everyone feels free to support the artists we champion, where there is freedom of expression and space for confrontation and discussion between people who don’t necessarily share the same political opinions.

One more political question. Back in 2018 you signed the 50/50 by 2020 pledge to try and increase gender parity at the Venice film festival, increase the number of female directors in competition. How do you assess your progress, given that this year out of the 20 directors in competition, you have only one woman?