As one of the most glamorous events in the world, a first-timer gives some insight into working the Venice Film Festival (Picture: Getty)
Venice Film Festival kicked the autumn movie season off with a glitzy bang earlier this month, welcoming Hollywood’s biggest stars to the Lido including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
Setting cinematic tastes since 1932, as the oldest film festival in the world Venice has always enjoyed a reputation for old-school charm wrapped in Italian elegance – hard to avoid when the usual mode of transport is by boat across the lagoon.
It’s also the kind of event that adds major prestige to a film premiering there, either just via glamorous kudos or its highest seal of approval, the Golden Lion Award.
But what’s it really like to attend the festival for work, as a journalist?
Well, I have the mosquito bites, eye bags and excessive amounts of work-related accessories in my laptop bag to tell you all about it after conquering my first time there.
To start with, let’s cover the actual feat of getting there because, boy, is it not straightforward. Having never been to Venice before, it felt like a cacophany of logistical nightmares: get to the airport, get from the airport to where I was staying, and get from my accommodation to the actual festival on the Lido.
Not all of us get to experience boat travel quite like George Clooney and Brad Pitt (Picture: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Apple TV+)
And all without doing it on a wallet-bursting celebrity budget.
Luckily, I managed to nab last-minute, one-stop flights with Vueling after genuinely despairing that I would ever find an airline that would allow to to being a suitcase (sorry, who can manage nine nights with cabin baggage only?)
After scouring the festival website for a breadcrumb of help (weirdly harder to find than you’d think) I learned about the water bus lines you can book from the airport to various stops in the area, for 15 Euros a trip.
In another stroke of luck, I managed to pick up accommodation remarkably tucked away from the crowds behind the iconic Venice landmark St Mark’s Square, after getting advice on the best location to minimise my morning commute to the Lido via vaporetto.
It was right near some of the most jaw-dropping architecture in the world I could merely glimpse at each morning, as here’s the crux of the matter when it comes to attending Venice Film Festival: you don’t actually get to see any of Venice. It would more accurately be described as a trip to the Lido, the nearby island where the Biennale is based.
While attractive enough with its greenery and Mediterranean vibe, it doesn’t hold the same charm as Venice proper with its canals and grand old buildings. And with the daily spoils of the festival’s screenings, press conferences and talks, there’s an awful lot of time spent indoors anyway, fighting over plug sockets and desk space.
My average day would see me up well before 7am in an (often futile) attempt to beat the queue for the vaporetto, where you can easily get trapped for an hour, and not back in my hotel room much before 11pm. You have to go hard at film festivals to make the most of what’s on offer, meaning routinely working 12 to 16-hour days in order to meet embargo lifts on reviews and race out news lines.
It’s hard work and long days spent mainly on the Lido – but worth it (Picture: Tori Brazier)
After all, we had movies including Maria, Queer, Babygirl and Joker: Folie à Deux to cover.
There’s also a lot of sitting on the floor and cracking out your laptop where possible to write something up or filing copy from your phone while standing in a line to try and guarantee access to some of the hottest ticket press conferences.
When people imagine the glamour of Venice, they they definitely imagine all the glorious red carpet outfits and sipping cocktails by the beach or an espresso in a quaint café steeped in history. And someone may be doing that – but it’s definitely not your average journalist on a deadline!
Having said that, if I made the earlier boat across in the mornings, one of my favourite things to do was taking 15 minutes to myself to enjoy one of the delicious chocolate croissants sold onsite before the first screening of the day, alongside the sweetest mandarin oranges I have ever had.
It was certainly a quick way to recover from the morning commute via water that features a lot more in common with the sardine-like crowds on the tube than any luxurious gondola trips in Venice proper, as seen on postcards and in popular culture.
The famous red carpet outside Venice Film Festival’s Sala Grande (Picture: Tori Brazier)
Gorgeous architecture in Saint Mark’s Square, which I walked through during my daily Venice commute (Picture: Tori Brazier)
Venice’s most popular mode of transport – the gondola – which sadly wasn’t on the books for me (Picture: Tori Brazier)
Something we could all enjoy for free though was the glorious weather – a dazzling streak of uninterrupted sunshine and temperatures of 32C until storms broke the day I left. I was also very grateful to past me for packing both electric and manual fans for when I inevitably tired out the battery.
It also means there should be no judgement for the gelato I might have had at 10pm once or twice, when at one stage I decided it was actually too hot to go chocolate flavoured. Which brings me perfectly onto the highlight of my trip, next to the films – the food. Having never met a carbohydrate I didn’t like, it was a thrill to dive deep into pizzas, seafood pastas and bruschetta.
I also visited a local haunt for some fresh trout one evening where, even though the waitress was disappointed I didn’t finish the accompanying capers, I was nonetheless brought some homemade cheesecake and limoncello on the house.
When it comes to rubbing shoulders with celebrities, there is a slight possibility of that – you can go and wait by the dock each day to welcome them to the Lido, and I also had Sacha Baron Cohen walk right next to me when seemingly avoiding the red carpet.
Daniel Craig and his Oscar-winning wife Rachel Weisz at the premiere of his new film Queer (Picture: Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock)
But the sheer volume of premieres aside – multiple a day – working reporters are kept pretty separate from the starrier batches of talent, with the red carpet almost exclusively for photographers. The stars are even driven directly onto the carpet to be presented to the world’s media, avoiding any possible fan scuffle for autographs and selfies beforehand.
No – the enticement of a festival like this to film journalists, amid the chaos, is the excitement of seeing and watching things first, driving the conversation around them. Laying eyes on highly-anticipated performances like Daniel Craig’s in Queer, Angelina Jolie’s big screen return in Maria and Nicole Kidman’s exposing performance in Babygirl.
It’s knowing that Joker: Folie à Deux is 100% a musical, no matter what Lady Gaga seems to think, and also seeing the buzz quickly erupt around Brady Corbet’s enthralling epic The Brutalist, which is already driving awards season talk.
Venice flights
I travelled home from Venice to London Gatwick via Barcelona with Vueling, part of IAG, which is one of the main low-cost airlines in Europe. This year marks Vueling’s 20th anniversary, celebrating two decades of connecting passengers to over 100 destinations across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. UK passengers can fly with Vueling to Rome and Florence from London Gatwick, as well as Paris Orly and a range of destinations in Spain from Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London (Gatwick and Heathrow).
And it’s hard to know where else you can simply rock up and sit in the audience of a still pretty intimately sized talk with a Hollywood legend on the level of Sigourney Weaver – and have them so pleased to be there.
A couple of words of warning to those seeking to visit Venice from someone who learned it the hard way though – firstly, avoid bringing a heavy suitcase if you can because the only way it’s getting transported anywhere is by boat and/or your own hand dragging it over cobbles.
Secondly, avoid any early morning flights if you’re staying in the San Zaccaria region and don’t want to spring for any private mode of transport to the airport. It’s a frankly horrifying 25-minute plus haul over the city (remember all the bridges) to try and catch a bus at a more regular interval. Or, as I never want to think about again, being forced to take a 4:56am waterbus for a 9:10am flight.
But was it worth it? Assolutamente.
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