(ANSA) - VENICE, 12 SEPTEMBER - The balance of the 78th edition of the Venice International Film Festival is positive: the president of the Biennale Roberto Cicutto and the artistic director Alberto Barbera are satisfied at the press meeting.
Here are the numbers: total admissions were 153,265 (+ 63% compared to 2020 and -7% to 2019); the total projections 769, those sold out 369, with a filling percentage rising by 70%. "The fact that cinema has not been bent by the pandemic also for the quality of the results is a very positive thing and this is demonstrated by the numbers that have gone far beyond even the 2019 edition, which is the last one before Covid. the positive trend continues, that the sofa at home is finally abandoned and that there is indeed an enlargement of the seats in the dining room as hoped for by Minister DarioFranceschini "underlines Barbera.
The main concern for the festival, however, was certainly Covid: "We had calculated that with the average of 3% of the swabs carried out, we should have had 120 positive cases, while in the end we found only three, a truly surprising figure". Five Italian films in competition, explains Barbera, are certainly not "the result of a geopolitical criterion, but of quality alone and it was right not to exclude them.
If festivals still have a function, perhaps even more than before, it is to enhance high-end products, moving in this ocean of indistinct products ". (HANDLE).
