It's just the latest act of a controversy that has been going on for months, since The Venice Biennale Foundation has asserted its independence from politics deciding to reopen, albeit partially, the Russian pavilion for the Visual Arts Biennale, which opened in May. A flurry of letters from Brussels to Venice requested clarification, leading to the decision to revoke a €2 million funding grant to the Venice cultural institution.
With evident irony on the occasion of the press conference for the presentation of the 83rd Film Festival Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco almost ridiculed the EU Commission's bureaucracy. "Recently," Buttafuoco said, "the European Union has shed a traveling companion, but without creating a significant economic impact. It's a traveling companion with whom we shared a journey, and it's leaving us today for purely political reasons, certainly not legal, let alone cultural ones. But the Biennale certainly can't submit. We don't do politics, let's not follow the drumbeat. And we'll find a judge in Berlin."
They are the words with which Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Venice Biennale, has chosen to respond to the European Commission's decision to suspend the Foundation's €2 million funding for film production projects. This clear stance came after weeks of institutional debate and the lengthy tug-of-war surrounding the Russian pavilion at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale.
"We," added the president of the Biennale, "are called here to conduct international research in the field of the arts, to obey their wishes. Otherwise, we would fail to uphold the principles of autonomy and freedom of expression and research, of fantasy, of imagination that have been the hallmark of this institution for 131 years." Buttafuoco chose a literary metaphor, a bit autobiographical, recalling Phaedrus's 'lupus in fabula' but “Lupus in fabula” is also the title of the radio program on Rai Radio 1 dedicated to literature that Buttafuoco hosted until a few weeks ago but which from next autumn, will not return to the Rai programming.
Buttafuoco is referring to the story of the wolf accusing the lamb of polluting the stream water, despite evidence proving the accusation impossible. "In a certain sense," says Buttafuoco, "it's the European Commission, the wolf, sending the first letter. The European Union takes away 2 million from the Biennale and gives 6 billion in six months to Putin.A figure that concerns the amount of permitted energy products. This is where the water gets muddy. And it's certainly not here, but 'superior stabat lupus'."
But still: the metaphor also returns in the reconstruction of the subsequent disputes: "In a second letter, the wolf accuses the lamb of having spoken badly of him on a very specific date. The lamb wasn't born when the wolf claims to have been insulted, and in the third letter, the wolf cuts him short and eats him. If it wasn't you, it must have been your father. The 'wolf in the story,' you'll agree, is entirely appropriate."
The president of the Biennale therefore insists on the distinction between the political and legal levels Because the European decision, in fact, concerns funding linked to the Venice Film Festival, not the visual arts. "But it's clear," adds Buttafuoco, "that cinema activities will naturally continue. The solidity of the institution allows it."
Of the same tenor the words of the exhibition director Alberto Barbera"The cuts threatened by the EU Commission," Barbera explains, "do not appear to have any impact on our activities. I have not been asked to give up anything or cut anything from what are and will remain the activities planned for this year and next. I don't know what else to add, other than to emphasize my dismay at a decision that seems frankly incomprehensible to me, both because it affects a department of the Biennale that has nothing to do with the artificially generated controversy surrounding the Biennale Arte," he observes, "and because of the apparent lack of legal evidence to support a decision that remains unfounded and which I hope will be demonstrated as such by the subsequent stages of the dispute between the Biennale and the European Union."
The two million cuts are the contributions for three years, 2026, 2027 and 2028., to support the Biennale College activities, but fortunately the Biennale has other resources capable of making up for this sudden budget deficit of around 700-750 thousand euros per year, given that we are talking about two million spread over three editions.
As for the contents of the 83rd Film Festival, According to Barbera, "cinema is not dead at all" and skeptics would only need to enter a theater where Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is being shown these days to realize that cinema is not at all moribund: it is a living organism, capable of continually regenerating itself and producing epiphanies and miracles of vision."
There are many new features at the event from September 2nd to 12th. Twenty films in competition, five of which are Italian including the return to Venice after 37 years with “Succederà questa notte”, “Ritorno a Buenos Aires” by Marco Bechis, “Il fuoco che ti porti dentro” by Edoardo De Angelis, “The Echo Chamber” by Andrea Pallaoro, “L'estranea” by Paolo Strippoli. There are 36 films out of competition at the Venice Open including those by Gianni Amelio and Mario Martone and 19 from Orizzonti, four of which are Italian; “Una Storia” by Anna Foglietta, “La ragazza con la Leica” by Alina Marazzi, “La città dei vivi” by Edoardo Gabriellini, and “I figli della scimmia” by Tommaso Landucci. Among the films dedicated to other films, noteworthy is “Joie de vivre” by Luca Guadagnino, dedicated to the work of Bernardo Bertolucci. A full 435 minutes. Seven hours of film. Good luck!
