Venice Film Festival under attack

The 65th Venice Film Festival begins today. The daily La Repubblica takes this as a peg to comment on German news magazine Der Spiegel's accusations that the selection of films chosen by the Italian organisers of the event was biased towards Italian movies and film magazine Variety's complaints about the high cost of the event: "The oldest film festival is under attack. This evening it will present itself in a family holiday mood, without the presence of all the major international film distributors, as it has done for some years now, ever since it was rele gated to a ceremonial but comparatively poor position among the international film festivals." The newspaper writes that the screens on the Venice Lido are not only under attack from the media but are also under siege from a host of new film festivals "like the gigantic Toronto festival that starts in a few days' time with ten new screens, the South Korean Pausan Festival that caters to the entire Asian market and the newest and most richly endowed Dubai Festival."

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