★ Venice International Film Festival

01Por que importa

Venice sets the terms of the autumn. Its calendar position, immediately before Telluride and Toronto and roughly six months ahead of the Academy Awards, has made it the place where studios and streamers choose to launch films they intend to campaign, and the trade press now treats the Lido premieres in the first week of September as the awards season's opening bell. A run of Golden Lion and Venice-premiered titles going on to Academy recognition over the past decade turned what was once a critics' festival into a strategic one.

The second reason is institutional. As a Biennale sector the Mostra sits inside a body that also runs the art and architecture exhibitions, and it inherits their seriousness about programming and their indifference to market noise. In our reading the Mostra is the most watchable of the major festivals: the competition is short enough to follow in full, the geography is small enough to walk, and because tickets are sold to the public the audience in the Sala Grande is not composed entirely of people who are working.

02A semana ao seu redor

The Lido changes completely and Venice barely notices. On the island, the Lungomare Marconi is fenced and screened, the vaporetto stops at Santa Maria Elisabetta and Lido Casinò run at capacity, and the strip of hotels and beach clubs along the seafront turns into a working village of production offices, press rooms and sponsor terraces. Bicycles are the local transport and the queue for a rented one on the first Saturday is long. Across the lagoon, the historic center carries on with its own September: in Art Biennale years the exhibitions in the Giardini and the Arsenale are open throughout, which gives film visitors a second reason to cross the water, and the Regata Storica on the Grand Canal falls on the first Sunday in September, usually inside the festival's first weekend.

The practical consequence is a divided city. People with badges tend to stay on the Lido and rarely cross; people who came for Venice stay in Cannaregio, Dorsoduro or San Marco and take the boat out for screenings. The last vaporetto back from the Lido after a late premiere is the single most consequential logistical fact of the fortnight, and the reason the Lido's own bars stay busy well past midnight.

03Quando chegar

The opening Wednesday and the first weekend hold the largest premieres and most of the press activity; the market at the Excelsior works hardest in the first five days. If the object is to see films in the Sala Grande with the least friction, the second Monday through Thursday is quieter and tickets are easier. Arriving on the Tuesday before opening gives time to collect a badge or passes and to work out the boat timetable before it matters. Staying through the closing Saturday is worth it only if you want the awards; most of the industry has left by the second Wednesday.

04Onde se hospedar

There are two choices and they produce different festivals. Staying on the Lido puts you within walking or cycling distance of every screening; the Excelsior and the seafront hotels along the Lungomare are the landmarks, the smaller pensions on the interior streets are the practical option, and the island empties of atmosphere the moment the festival ends. Staying in the historic center gives you Venice in the evening and a twenty-minute boat ride each way, which is romantic on the first day and tiring by the fourth; Dorsoduro and Castello are closest to the San Zaccaria departures, Cannaregio is quieter and cheaper. A third group takes rooms on the mainland at Mestre and commutes by bus and boat, which works but adds an hour to each end of the day. Whichever you choose, the timing of the last boat governs everything.

05Acesso e hospitalidade

The Mostra is unusual among the major festivals in selling to the public. La Biennale publishes a ticket scheme each summer covering single seats in the main halls, multi-screening cards and subscriptions, sold online in advance and at box offices on the Lido, with a portion of seats in each screening released for public sale. Alongside that it runs the accreditation system common to festivals of this rank: press, industry and market accreditation applied for online in the summer, each with its own access levels and queue priorities, and reduced-rate accreditation for students and cinema-club members. The Venice Production Bridge, the festival's market arm based at the Hotel Excelsior, registers companies separately. Corporate hospitality is confined to the festival's sponsors, who operate lounges and terraces along the Lungomare; the organizer does not sell hospitality packages to the public. Exact prices and application deadlines change each year and are published on labiennale.org.

06Onde ocorre a actividade social

Almost all of it takes place on a single seafront street. The Lungomare Marconi between the Palazzo del Cinema and the Excelsior is where people wait, meet and are photographed, and the hotel terraces facing the Adriatic along it are the festival's daytime offices. The Excelsior's beach, with its rows of wooden bathing huts, is in use throughout and is public-facing outside sponsor hours. The Casinò building next to the Palazzo takes overflow screenings and press conferences. Away from the seafront, the Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta running across the island from the vaporetto stop holds the ordinary bars, gelaterie and restaurants where most of the eating actually happens, and it stays open late. In the historic city, the bars around Campo Santa Margherita and the Zattere in Dorsoduro take the late crowd that has crossed back, and the Giardini and Arsenale draw the same visitors during the day in Biennale years.

07Como chegar

08Aspectos práticos

09Histórico

The first Mostra was held in August 1932 on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior as a section of the Venice Biennale, with no jury and no prizes. It became competitive within a few years and, in the late 1930s, politically compromised: the principal award of the period carried the name of the head of the Italian government, and it was Venice's subordination to the regime that persuaded France to found a rival festival at Cannes. The Mostra stopped during the war and resumed in 1946.

The purpose-built Palazzo del Cinema opened on the Lungomare in 1937 and remains the festival's center. Political turbulence in 1968 led to the abolition of the competition, and the festival ran without prizes through the 1970s; the Golden Lion was reinstated in 1980. Alberto Barbera, artistic director in the late 1990s and again since 2011, rebuilt its relationship with American studios and specialty distributors, and it is that shift, more than any single film, that produced the festival's current position in the awards calendar.

10Quem está presente

Directors, performers and their teams; distributors, sales agents and streaming buyers working the Venice Production Bridge; a large accredited press corps, weighted toward Italian and European critics; programmers from Toronto, London, New York and the autumn circuit; Biennale members and Italian cultural institutions; and, distinctively, a substantial paying public of Venetians, mainland Italians and holidaying visitors who buy tickets and fill the same halls.