The 71st edition of the Venice Film Festival (VFF) will be held on August 27 through September 6. The complete list of the films in competition will be announced at the end of July.
Additionally, the third edition of the VFF’s associated Venice Film Market (VFM) will take place August 28 through September 3 under the continued direction of Pascal Diot. VFM will be held on the first floor of the Excelsior hotel, across the street from the red carpet and the main screening venues of the festival. Once again the market will include a digital video library and an industry club dedicated to international distributors, buyers and producers.
New to this edition is the “European Gap-Financing Co-Production Market,” intended to help European producers secure the final financing for their projects. In order to participate, projects must have 70 percent of the financing in place. The VFM will offer 16 selected projects (eight European, plus eight more from Italy alone) the opportunity to close their international financing through selected financiers, producers, distributors, sales agents and film funds. The submission deadline is June 20.
Also new is the “Italian Cinema Industry Focus,” a series of networking events, panels and other activities highlighting Italian movie producers and distributors.
The second edition of the “Final Cut in Venice” will be held August 31-September 1. Six films will be selected and work-in-progress copies will be presented to producers, buyers, distributors and organizers of international film festivals to help facilitate their post-production process, to promote possible co-production partnerships and to give them access to the distribution market. The deadline for submission in June 20.
The 2013 edition of the VFM showed a positive increase in the number of professionals attending the market, with 246 key distributors and 86 key sales agents. In total, some 1,400 professionals from 58 countries, including producers, film commissions and institutions and exhibitors attended the Market.
Pascal Diot told VideoAge, “For VFM’s third edition, we’ll have a special focus on the Italian industry with a strong support from ANICA, the national film association; AGPC, the country’s young producers association; the various Italian film commissions and all the Italian professionals. Special networking sessions and conferences will be organized with the international producers who will come from all over the world and especially through a strong collaboration with the Paris-based European Producers Club and the Luxembourg-based EAVE, the European audiovisual entrepreneurs organization.
‘The Final Cut in Venice’ initiative is extended to four new countries (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan) and all the other previous initiatives (meetings between the sales agents and the independent exhibitors of the International Confederation of Art Cinemas (CICAE), conferences, happy hours, industry club, market screenings and the digital video library) are still in place.”
