Good news. The Venice Film Festival has reinstated its jury press conference, overturning an unusual move to scrap the traditional opening event this year.
The festival responded to Deadline’s inquiry on Sunday by confirming that the press conference was now on.
A day earlier, the A-list festival, which kicks off on Wednesday, had told Deadline that the press conference was off due to a scheduling conflict.
“The opening conference is not being held due to coinciding commitments,” a senior member of the festival’s press team wrote to Deadline Saturday. The cancellation was also confirmed by a top festival executive who noted to Deadline that, as a “remedy”, there would be a “more relaxed welcome cocktail” with some press instead.
Deadline’s report (which was flagged to the festival ahead of publication) on the matter triggered backlash, leading to the change of course by the festival.
Watch on Deadline
Ultimately, this is good news for the press, transparency and all those who rightly want to hear from the jury. What it shouldn’t be is an opportunity for point-scoring or denigrating anyone, least of all the press doing their job.
Deadline’s questions to the festival about the jury conference had come about following the conference’s clear omission from the festival schedule, which was highly unusual. We asked multiple times why that was, but didn’t hear back. Until we insisted, and then heard back on Saturday.
Maybe there was a scheduling conflict concerning the jury head or a number of jury members. It’s possible. But that would also be highly unusual given that this is a staple commitment of all A-list juries.
The context here, as we laid out in our piece yesterday, is that festivals have been desperate to diminish the politically charged nature of press conferences all year. The festival has flatly denied that those were its motivations.
This year’s Venice Film Festival international jury is headed by Maggie Gyllenhaal with members comprising Tunisian director and screenwriter Kaouther Ben Hania, the English composer and artist Daniel Blumberg, the Italian professor Francesco Casetti, the French director and screenwriter Xavier Giannoli, the Afghan director and screenwriter Shahrbanoo Sadat, and the Hong Kong director and producer Johnnie To.
Jury press conferences have become a minefield for those on stage in recent years as journalists ask questions about their views on global politics, especially the Israel-Gaza war.
At last year’s Venice jury press conference, jury head Alexander Payne admitted he was “unprepared” to answer questions about Gaza as political issues dominated.
This year’s Berlin Film Festival was a highly charged edition with the opening jury press conference proving to be a flashpoint after jury president Wim Wenders said filmmakers should stay out of politics in answer to a question on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Other thorny topics likely to be on the table this Venice include the dearth of female directors in the main competition, the Iran-U.S. conflict and the Russian-Ukraine War.
This festival is already shaping up to include a large dose of politics with the addition of Israel-Gaza doc NAZA and the inclusion of Russian film DAU. Last week, Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters and filmmakers including Matteo Garrone and Isabel Coixet were among signatories of an open letter urging the Venice Biennale and film festival to take “concrete action in support of Palestine.”
The festival will run September 2 – 12, 2026.
