The 2018 Venice Film Festival is now oficially over. The line-up this year was nothing short of breathtaking (I’d say it even beat Cannes’, which was also impressive in its own right): Lanthimo’s “The Favourite”, the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scrugg”, Nemes’ “Sunset”, Guadagnino’s remake of “Suspiria”, Assayas’ “Non-Fiction”, Audiard’s “The Sisters Brothers”, Leigh’s “Peterloo”, Kent’s “The Nightingale”, Reygada’s “Our Time”, Cuarón’s Golden Lion-winnig “Roma”, and probably the highlight of the festival season in terms of legacy, Orson Welles’ final unfinished film “The Other Side of he Wind”. As you can see, there were plenty of great filmmakers showcasing their latest projects at the festival, and I hate myself right now for not being able to attend. There’s a lot to take out of this year’s festival, so let’s dive in.

So let’s start with the big winner: Cuarón’s film marks his return to Mexico for the first time since 2001’s “Y tu mamá también”, and his first film in his native language in almost two decades has received one of the biggest prizes in the film world. It’s the second year in a row that a Mexican director wins the Golden Lion, last year it going to del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” – needless to say, that film went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars; could “Roma” make a similar splash? I think that its already one of the frontrunners for Best Foreign Language Film at the very least. Now, me and others can’t help but think in the close friendship between Cuarón and del Toro, who presided over the festival jury this year, and I’m sure that raises a few eyebrows. Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, we still have to consider that del Toro is still one voice among a jury of nine, that included actors like Christophe Waltz and Naomi Watts and comic directors like Taika Waititi, film personalities of a wide aray of options and sensibilities, so any claims of favoritism shot at the very least be taken with a grain of salt.

Other winners include Yorgos Lanthimos “The Favourite”, his follow up to last year’s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, a period piece set on the 18th century that pits three women in a battle for the queen’s favoritism, which won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Actress for Olivia Colman; Jacques Audiard’s “The Sisters Brothers”, a western-comedy starring Joaquim Phoenix and John C. Riley (kind of unexpected from the director that made “A Prophet” (2009) and “Dheepan” (2015)), which won the Silver Lion for Best Director; Willem Defoe won the Best Actor award for his role in the film “At Eternity’s Gate”, a Vincent Van Gogh biopic directed by Julian Schnabel; the Best Screenplay Award went to Joel and Ethan’s western-anthology “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”; and the Special Jury Prize was awarded to Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale”, her follow-up project to the 2014 hit horror “The Babadook”. All these films look great on paper and were made by some of the most talented people at the industry right now, so be sure to check them out. But being frank, I’m kind of disappointed that Laszlo Nemes went home empty handed, I was really rooting for his film “Sunset” to make a big splash, much like “Son of Saul” did back in 2015. Oh well, it still has Toronto to look forward to.

Now, let’s talk Orson Welles. One of the most celebrated directors of all time, with timeless masterpieces to his name like “Citizen Kane” (1941), “Touch of Evil” (1958) and “The Trial” (1962), the man needs no introduction. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in October 1985, leaving his last film unfinished. “The Other Side of the Wind” was shot between 1970 and 1976, and after legal disputes and trouble with iranian financers, Welles shelved the project. Now, 40 years later, it has been completed. It concerns the last unfinished film of a late director (sound familiar?), played by John Huston, and it satirizes both the Classic Hollywood and the so called Hollywood Renaissance. Critics and reviewers are thrilled to finally be able to see Welles’ final production, and even though many have described it as “dated” (no surprise there, for a movie hat was shot in the 70s it will be hard to find a warm reception in the politically correct world of the 21st Century) and somewhat disjointed (also not surprising, since the leading creative voice of the project died over 30 years ago), people are still praising the vision and how it has that “70s feel” that has been absent from cinema for so long. I’m really looking forward to watching it, and that will be possible on November 2nd via Netflix. Which takes me to my next point…

The Netflix situation. Remember how a couple of months ago I wrote an article on the Cannes and Netflix debacle, because of the decision on Netflix part to retire their contending titles of the festival due to the legal restrictions of french law? Well, it seems that Venice handled that situation quite differently (and better, for that matter). For starters, there’s no italian law that restricts the online distribution of films that have already been shown in theaters, so that’s an advantage for them. This allowed them to avoid the whole conflict that plagued Cannes this May, by which titles such as “The Other Side of the Wind” and “Roma” had to be skipped altogether. And guess what? Now Venice has the bragging rights to say that they were the first to premiere Orson Welles’ final film on the one hand, and on the other their actual winner was actually scheduled to premiere at Cannes this year, but thanks to that conundrum it was forced to be moves to the fall festival, where it took the big prize. I guess that what I’m trying to say is that online distribution in general and Netflix in particular have become really big players in the industry right now, and film festivals, the consagrated institutions of world cinema as art, can either embrace the change and reward it like Venice did, or they can try to fight it and stick to their traditions, like Cannes did. Either way, as a viewer I just hope to get good amount of quality films. And on another note, a further film that was in competition to be released by Netflix is the Coen’s “The Ballad of Buster Scrugg”.

So there’s that. My ramblings went on a little too long and kind of moved a little bit away from the main topic. Still, I just want to say that the Venice Film Festival line-up this year was nothing short of breathtaking, and with some Cannes titles still coming this way we’ll have some quality cinema to look forward to in the next few months. That being said, congratulations on all the winners of this year’s Biennale and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for most of them.

Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it. The last couple of weeks have been a little complicated and I haven’t found much time to write, but for now I think the worst part is over and I can get back to doing what I love: talking movies. I’m already working on a review for you guys, it should be up sometime next week. If you enjoyed this post it’d be of great help if you could share it with your friends and family, and if you want to stay up to date with the contents of this blog don’t forget to hit the follow button. Until next time!