Tips, Observations, and Reviews from the 82nd Venice Film Festival
- Ray Wu
- 38 minutes ago
- 11 min read
Venice Film Festival, or going by its legal name, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, takes place annually in Venice, and more specifically, on the island of Lido. Gifted an industry pass, I had the pleasure of attending the front half of the festival from August 26th to September 1st with a group of friends.
If you are interested in the short reviews of the films I watched, scroll down. I will first babble about the experience for a bit.
Overall notes:
The festival and the city are intimately tied together. Venice doesn’t need me to advertise for it: sit by the canals and watch the tradesmen, and hours will fly by. Be lazy!
Do remember to schedule some downtime for yourself away from the silver screen. The other exhibitions by the Biennale (art, dance, theatre) are equally well-curated. Inspired by The Brutalist (2025), I was particularly drawn to the architecture exhibition.
Belonging to the big five (Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and Sundance), you might find attending the festival daunting. Fear not: there is a fairly large public presence at the festival, from college students to old couples. They are there just because they love movies as well! Depending on your personal preferences, you can either entirely avoid or throw yourself into the buzz, glam, wealth, and douchebaggery. If you prefer something more casual, come to something like Toronto or SXSW (not saying this because I am biased). Toronto is attended by a much more casual crowd, with specific programs for youth and up-and-coming films.
A huge part of Venice is, for lack of a better word, vibe. Embrace the exhaustion, and pretend you are someone important amidst the droplets of the small hours and the droning noise of the water bus engine.
Transportation:
Take the bus from the airport to Venice. Do not be fooled by the allure of taking a boat. It is somehow more crowded and slower than the M60 SBS to LGA on a Friday evening.
Venice proper is very walkable, but not at all accessible. If you are carrying large pieces of luggage or have trouble getting around, make sure to plan for some overhead time before the screening.
There are multiple water bus (Vaporetto, operated by transit commission ACTV) routes that will get you to the island of Lido, where all screenings take place. Some are express; some are not. I don’t think the Italians themselves have figured out which boat should do what at what time to minimize congestion. If you just check your phone and factor in an extra 15 minutes or so, you will be fine. Water buses are free if you have an industry/press pass.
The walk from the public Lido dock to the strip of beach where most theatres are takes about 15 minutes. Most people opt for the buses instead, but those get outrageously competitive to get on when everyone is trying to make the 9 AM Park Chan-wook after 5 hours of sleep plus a hangover.
Do not cut lines! It was about 2 AM. We wrapped up with Lido and lined up for the waterbus for about 45 minutes. A group of drunk teenagers decided to enter through the exit, and the uncles were very quick to turn their hand expression into contacts. Everyone will hate you.
Ticketing:
Tickets go on sale quite a bit in advance. The popular titles will go out in seconds. There isn’t a huge resale market, so your best bet is to keep refreshing the page for when someone returns the ticket due to conflicts (and they will). We got added to a group chat by some millennials while lining up, and they were giving out tickets for the screenings that they could no longer attend. Scored Bugonia.
The ticketing website was probably built by a monkey playing with a random keystring generator. It sucks. My friend wrote a Python script that checks the site automatically for newly released (returned) tickets, and it worked like a charm.
Press & Industry screenings (P&I) are fairly easy to enter. The ticketing process is the same as the regular screenings. You just have to put in your accreditation, and you will be eligible to book the P&Is that are usually locked.
Red carpet premieres (screened at Sala Grande) are pretty hard to come by. P&I passes do not help. Still, it is not impossible if you put a bit of finesse into it.
According to my friends, the chances of getting off the rush line are about 50/50 if you show up an hour or so in advance.
Screenings:
There are quite a few theatres where screenings take place (they all start with Sala, “room” in Italian). Maps are readily available. My personal favourite was Sala Casino: terrible seats, kept me awake through some low moments.
If the cast & and crew are in attendance, then red carpet, an annoyingly long entrance, and a standing ovation are to be expected. Some people find the standing ovation part silly (our staff editor Kallen), but it is a tradition. In any case, you will find yourself standing up, either because of the peer pressure exerted by the judgmental couple seated next to you or the magical atmosphere generated by a theatre of cinemaphiles.
The dress code is less strict than Cannes, but a bit more controlled than TIFF. No one will make a fuss if you wear shorts to your fifth screening of the day. Black tie is expected at Sala Grande premieres. Although, half of the theatre got away with navy blazers.
Food & Entertainment (that aren’t films):
There are industry events, masterclasses, and Q&As open to P&I passholders. I went to the one with Jia Zhang-ke, and it was very well run with live translations in earpieces in English, Mandarin, and Italian. There are cocktail afterparties, but those fall under the category of “if you have to ask…” If you don’t care so much about the exclusivity, anywhere along the beach is a great place to decompress with a few friends, chat about the film you just watched, and be performative with your smoking jacket and cigarettes.
The food options in Venice proper are better than in Lido.
My schedule was packed to the brim, so in between screenings, I could only manage to grab a prosciutto sandwich from Leonard di Corner Store, who was clearly playing favourites with Italian speakers. If you have more time, there are good eateries around (pizza, pasta, seafood) as well. Don’t spend your money on fine-dining options on Lido, though.
The nightlife situation is the inverse of the food situation, at least during the festival periods. Bars and clubs stay open quite late on Lido, but only a few restaurants stay open past 11 in Venice.
List of restaurants that we went to:
Lido:
Osteria Giardinetto: Run-of-the-mill Italian restaurant specializing in seafood. Good refined option if you have some extra time.
Rostorante 161: Took a chance with this one while taking the Lido bus to see the entire island on the last day. Below-average food served by a disinterested family. In fairness to them, there were also about 10 Vanity Fair reporters rushing to finish their reviews, typing loudly.
Ristorante gera ora: It is another solid seafood option. Be aware of the greenhouse that opens up and gets stuck when it starts pouring.
Venice:
Pasticceria Trevisan: Transformational pastries. Enough said.
Estro: Expensive and overrated. Estro appears in the Michelin guide, but the food is wholly underwhelming. In the menu, I found the remnants of innovation and creativity from years before, but what remains is a disjointed combination of flavours that did not quite work. Dessert was a 10/10 though.
La Vacaria: Opens late. Had their tagliatelle and steak around 11 PM, an hour during which almost anything tastes good. Very generous staff who offered each of us a shot at the end. In my opinion, the wine list is better than the menu.
Osteria Enoteca Ai Artisti: Great seafood. Small tables by the canal, and it opens late into the afternoon. Solid choice.
We went to Wisteria Ristorante (one-star Michelin) on the last day. The food itself was solid for the price of the 9-course prix fixe. What surprised us was the fact that our server overheard us cutting it close to a screening and called a water taxi without asking. We felt very self-important, zapping through the canal and docking right outside of Hotel Excelsior on a Vizianello.
KFC at Venezia Santa Lucia (train station). I did not go, but feel compelled to mention its existence in case you are the Italian cuisine-hating type.
In hindsight, the experience can really be completely different depending on how much pep you’ve got in your step. Be smart and fun, and you are guaranteed to sail away with a good time.
Quick notes on the films that I saw (in chronological order):
Spoilers!!
Ghost Elephant, Werner Herzog
★★★☆☆ | Charm over substance
Werner Herzog’s documentary follows Steve Boyes in his search for the “ghost elephants,” descendants of Henry, the largest elephant ever recorded, who was brutally killed in 1955. Like much of Herzog’s work, the film is playful and self-aware, but this time, the tone feels overbearing. Herzog’s personality, usually the lifeblood of his documentaries, becomes an overcompensation. His humour and narration attempt to patch over the film’s structural gaps: recycled footage, thin coverage, and the absence of any satisfying resolution. What should have been a poignant ecological reflection ends with a half-hearted postscript after the credits.
When the narrative falters, the film retreats into montage—pretty sequences substituting for substance. Herzog’s use of Xui, the local guide, is especially uneasy. Xui’s good-willed gestures and mimicry of animals are played for laughs, not understanding, and Herzog’s gaze turns condescending. Xui’s openness to the camera contrasts with the Western researchers at Stanford, who deliver shallow, media-trained soundbites. They replace genuine insight with spectacle: numbers and jargon about DNA sequencing and supercomputers meant to impress rather than illuminate the undercerning viewers.
Herzog’s charm and voice still captivate, but here they expose as much as they conceal. The result is a film both fascinating and hollow, enthralled by its own mythology yet haunted by what it cannot quite capture.
Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos
A review will be published by staff writer Justin Gao.
After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino
Read staff writer Sophie Elliot’s review here. She liked it quite a bit more than I did.
Árva, László Nemes
★★★★★ | A slow burn that will undoubtedly divide audiences.
As I left the theatre, I overheard complaints about the ambiguity of the father and the underdevelopment of the mother. I think that is exactly the point. The film unfolds through the eyes of twelve-year-old Jewish half-orphan Andor Hirsch, whose postwar Budapest is rendered as a oneric haze of confusion. His supposed father dominates the frame, consuming all the air in his world and suffocating the hope Andor once held for the heroic return of his “real” father. His mother, distant and cold, carries her own invisible wounds, struggling to keep the family intact under the weight of collective trauma.
For a twelve-year-old, the moral calculus of survival is impossible to grasp: the difference between compromise and corruption remains blurred. The film captures that blur with haunting precision. Its evocation of 1950s Hungary is so immersive, so thick with texture and life, that long after the credits roll, you remain suspended in its atmosphere, unable to shake the quiet devastation it leaves behind.
Calle Málaga, Maryam Touzani
★★★★☆ | Charming
An aging Spanish woman in Tangier refuses to let go of the past. She buys back her sold furniture, hides in the closet while the real estate agent uses the “vacant” property for his trysts, and even runs an illegal soccer bar—all to undo her daughter’s decision to sell her home. What begins as a portrait of generational conflict slowly becomes a tender meditation on aging, attachment, and renewal. María Ángeles Muñoz discovers, in the gruff old man who runs the secondhand furniture shop, a late-blooming romance that feels both absurd and deeply human.
Though occasionally predictable, the film’s sincerity shines. It is an earnestly written, well-acted tear-jerker, with a surprising amount of explicit scenes that, thankfully, fall on the side of old people being cute.
No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook
A review by Staff Editor Hannah Smith can be found here.
Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro
★★★1/2☆ | Fun but dragged on
Tonally compatible with Poor Things, this 2025 version of Frankenstein—like the rest of del Toro's filmography—carries a lot of care and heart. But, for a story that is more than 200 years old, it is hard to innovate. Subtext was sacrificed for the film, making the 149-minute runtime a bit hard to swallow. But at the end of the day, if del Toro isn’t making movies like this, who will? I will keep watching them if he keeps making them.
My Father and Qaddafi, Jihan K
★★★1/2☆ | A vital story, lost in its own telling
My Father and Qaddafi is a film about the filmmaker's journey to understand her father's life and disappearance. Filled with footage and moments of genuine impact, Jihan has undeniably done her research on the overwhelming changes in Libya. Unfortunately, the exposition of history dilutes her own personal connection to a personal story. Be that as it may, Jihan showed an impressive ability to comb through and build a cohesive narrative that is larger than anything her younger self could have imagined. My Father and Qaddafi is a milestone film about modern Arab history, and despite its flaws, it remains a film worth watching.
À pied d’œuvre, Valérie Donzelli
★★☆☆☆ | French filmmaker suffering from French writer syndrome
Full disclosure: I fell asleep for parts of the film. After three films in a row, the oversung message about what it means to be a” true artist” in Paris just isn’t the theme that can keep my engagement. The film is a character study of a photographer turned writer Paul, who gives up everything in his life to pursue his dream. The plot unfolds as usual: lack of income leads to poverty, which leads to a degraded mental state, which leads to isolation from family and frequent “crash-outs.” The path to recovery is equally straightforward. Living with the working class teaches the failing artist the importance of everyday life, the value of the small things, and the beauty in grime, inspiring him to pump out a winning manuscript with no effort, minus, of course, the excruciating inciting poverty.
À pied d’œuvre is a cliché done with no attempt to go further. It sulks in the trouble of being a writer, unable or unwilling to move on.
Broken English, Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth
★★★★1/2 | "As Tears Go By"
An inventive and eccentric tribute to the inimitable Marianne Faithfull, singer, actress, and 60s cultural icon, Broken English unfolds within the surreal confines of the “Ministry of Not Forgetting.” Staffed by Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, and a chorus of sharp and creative women writers, singers, and artists, the Ministry serves as both stage and commentary box, where Faithfull’s life is discussed, dramatized, and deconstructed. Directors Pollard and Forsyth even bring Marianne herself into the studio, her reflections intercut with archival footage that bridges the distance between past and present.
A subject like Faithfull demands a film rich in cultural resonance, and Broken English rises to the challenge. Its narrative conceit can, at times, feel overly elaborate, but the emotional core remains clear. The austere beauty of the Ministry’s brutalist setting radiates unexpected warmth, mirroring the film’s blend of irony and affection. As the film recounts Marianne’s mistakes, successes, unapologetic candour, and scars left from a deeply misogynistic culture, I couldn’t help but feel emotional about a life well-lived. She passed away in January this year, but her legacy will live on.
Ray Wu is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Double Exposure. Three words to describe him are Talkative, During, Movies. He believes that either George Clooney or Tony Leung should play him in a biopic.