In the beginning was 1968: when the protest erupted at the Venice Film Festival

On August 26, 1968 , the Venice Lido became the scene of what would later become a nationwide youth political protest . At the Venice Film Festival, a strong protest by filmmakers against the festival's statute, which dates back to Fascism, was underway. The " Coordinating Committee for the Boycott" was formed, composed of directors and screenwriters, primarily members of the ANAC (National Association of Italian Film Critics), who demanded democratic cultural management and the right to information for critics and journalists. The goal was to boycott the inauguration, after the Festival had been canceled in Cannes a few months earlier, in the wake of the political movements we remember as "May 1968."

At that time, Biennale president Luigi Chiarini ordered the suspension of the Festival and closed the Palazzo del Cinema, which was guarded by police. The PCI and PSIUP proposed that the City Council entrust the cultural direction of the Festival to filmmakers, but the DC opposed the proposal. This resulted in the Festival opening on August 27th, with a low profile and low attendance. These effects would last about a decade before the festival regained its former glory.

The festival abolishes competitions and prizes are suspended, the 1973, 1977, 1978 editions do not take place. These are the Years of Lead , characterised by increasingly harsh social tension.

Pier Paolo Pasolini also found himself at the center of the controversy at the 1968 Venice Film Festival. He was there with his film Teorema , which explores the theme of the sacred in a bourgeois family. Initially, Pasolini did not join the protests, but he did call for the awards ceremony to be suspended and for the police to refrain from protesting.

The situation escalates with the explosion of a firecracker in front of the Palazzo del Cinema. Pasolini then chooses to side with the protesters and proposes a counter-festival in Venice.

Directors who had initially joined the protest, such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Liliana Cavani, later regularly participated in the Festival, leaving Pasolini isolated in his choice to boycott his own film.

Teorema was nevertheless screened, received positive reviews, but was confiscated for being considered obscene . Pasolini faced trial and from that year onwards no longer participated in the Venice Film Festival. His protest signaled a radical critique of the Festival's cultural and political management, becoming a symbol of the tensions of those years.

Venice Film Festival, No Grandi Navi protest on September 7, 2019 (Getty)

On the red carpet and outside the Palazzo del Cinema, there have been countless protests linked to political and social events. In 2001, shortly before the G8 summit in Genoa , a demonstration interrupted the opening night with a banner against the G8.

In 2010, protests were about security cuts at the screening of the film "Biutiful."

In the years that followed, the No-TAV movements and environmental associations, particularly those against large ships in the Venetian lagoon , created a front of environmental and political activism that enjoyed moments of public visibility even near the Venice Film Festival. However, it appears that there was no specific, official No-TAV protest during the Venice Film Festival, but rather a general solidarity and convergence with other environmental and social mobilizations in Venice.

In 2019 and 2023 , the years of “Me too” , gender protests exploded linked to the presence of controversial directors (such as Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson ) and to criticisms of the scarcity of female directors in competition.

Venice Film Festival, protest against Erdogan on September 9, 2016 (Getty)

This year's 82nd edition is marked by the mobilization for Palestine and the absence of Israeli actors Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler , two of the protagonists of In the Hand of Dante , Julian Schnabel 's eagerly awaited film out of competition.

The Venice4Palestine collective, with over 1,500 signatures from directors, actors, and artists from around the world, including Marco Bellocchio, Matteo Garrone, Ken Loach, Laura Morante, Alice and Alba Rohrwacher, asked the Biennale, in an open letter dated August 22, to take a clear stance against the war in Gaza, the genocide, and the famine against the Palestinian people.