Venice Film Festival competition line up reduced

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Biennale on Thursday, Feb 2, announced their first ‘renovations’ to the Venice Film Festival roster under the directorship of Alberto Barbera, who has taken the reins of the festival after Marco Mueller’s mandate was not renewed.

Under Barbera, the Venice film festival official selection will become “lighter” with fewer films (still all world premieres) in the main competition, which the Biennale says will allow films to receive increased visibility and screenings, ensuring distributors and sales agents a stronger focus on Venice competition selected pictures.

Venice will also debut their new “light” market with the upcoming 69th edition, with a video library, business center and industry club.

At the same time, Venice will place focus on the Biennale College by creating an outreach program aimed at tapping new talents work with “micro and low budget” films as well as assure on line distribution.

And for the festival, there will only be three sections to make up Venice’s official selection: Competition, Out of Competition and Orizzonti.

The Venice 69 (competition) line up will consist of no more than 20 titles.

Venice’s out of competition program will screen a maximum of 11 titles of which no more than three will be allotted for the midnight selection. Out of competition will be reserved for those filmmakers whose works have appeared in Venice’s main competition in previous years. Titles must be feature length and in world premiere, some exception may be made for those films not yet screened outside the home country, Screen Daily reported.