Venezia 83
Two flamingos, in the Lagoon, after dark. We can still make them out because they’re caressed by a beam of light. It is not the moon, but a theatrical spotlight—known in Italian stage jargon as occhio di bue: ox eye. Within the folds of this subtle deception resides the magnificent illusion of cinema, where fiction becomes truth, though never, itself, reality.
Mostra, then: exhibition. Not Festival. The distinction is evident from the very beginning, starting with Manuele Fior’s elegant poster for the 83rd Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia. Mostrare – to show – is to select, to preserve, to look at once towards what has been and what has yet to be. It means choosing what to bring out of the darkness and into view, and what to leave at the edges of the frame. It is within this space, suspended between memory and possibility, that La Biennale continues, day after day, to build its work.
La Biennale di Venezia is exactly as old as cinema, and its Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica is approaching its centenary: an extraordinary vantage point from which to witness the ceaseless evolution of the language of film. Over this period, cinema has embraced sound, colour, digital technology, the rise of streaming platforms and, today, Artificial Intelligence, which is already reshaping how images are produced and disseminated. The way films are made has changed, and so has the way we watch them. The Mostra has weathered these changes without losing its defining character. It has set no prohibitions and drawn no boundaries in advance, but has recognised cinema wherever it happens, always keeping the quality of artistic research and the centrality of the author at the heart of its work. Technologies change, as do devices, modes of production and audience habits. But the need to choose what to show remains. And perhaps so does the responsibility to bring into the light what might otherwise be left in the dark. Once again, the Official Selection – together with the sections that have gradually joined it over the years – bears witness to an extraordinary diversity of stories, geographies, imaginaries and cultures, embodied in the work of filmmakers whose films, edition after edition, keep attracting enthusiasts from across the globe. And at a time of such profound global uncertainty, the increase in applications for cultural and professional accreditation compared with previous years stands as a testament to the all-too-human desire to keep building, imagining, thinking and dreaming.
The Mostra opens with a fitting tribute to a great filmmaker, Tinto Brass. His Col cuore in gola, presented in the Venezia Classici section, is brought back into the view of the present. So too are the nineteen other films receiving their world-premiere restored screenings in the same section, thanks to the work of film archives, cultural institutions and production companies from across the globe. If cinema needs memory, it needs fresh eyes and fresh thinking just as much.
Hence the importance of Biennale College, the international laboratory for advanced training established by La Biennale alongside the Mostra in 2012. At this 83rd edition, it will present four new feature films selected, developed and produced through the fourteenth edition (2025–2026) of Biennale College Cinema. Each project received funding of €200,000, placing them within the micro-budget category by contemporary production standards. Yet within the limits of such small-scale filmmaking lies a strength and vitality capable of embracing an entire world.
And here again are the flamingos in the night; here again the light that imitates the moon, and the waters of the Lagoon lapping against the familiar silhouette of the Palazzo del Cinema, its flags fluttering in the wind—some of them, from distant lands, at war with one another.
In the end, the Mostra is that beam of light. It brings together masters and first-time filmmakers, restored classics and films just coming into being, memory and the future. Cinema – the most industrial of all the arts, akin to the forge of Hephaestus – is the unknown god. That is why, year after year, we return to the Lido: to see, in that irreducible outpost of the shared experience of darkness, whatever cinema chooses to illuminate. Always on the wings of imagination.