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Festival coverage

Venice Film Festival

2 September – 12 October 2020

The 77th edition of the Italian event managed to go ahead as a physical edition after a festival year badly hit by the Covid pandemic. Chloé Zhao's Nomadland won the Golden Lion.

Other years (10)

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Latest reviews

  • The Duke
    Review preview for The Duke

    There's some lovely family-driven humour in the script by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman delivered with great comic timing by the veteran leads.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    The story of a taxi driver who stole a Goya from London's National Gallery and began to send ransom notes.
  • The Rossellinis
    Review preview for The Rossellinis

    Insightful and at times wonderfully playful.

    Anne-Katrin Titze · 4 out of 5
    A documentary recounting the lives of Roberto Rossellini's children from the perspective of Alessandro Rossellini, the first grandson of the director.
  • Laila In Haifa
    Review preview for Laila In Haifa

    The themes attach themselves like lead to each exchange, giving everything a theatrical quality and rendering character development so bland that no amount of roving camera can offset the airless result.

    Amber Wilkinson · 2 out of 5
    The interwoven stories of five women are told over the course of a fateful night in a Haifa club.
  • Mosquito State
    Review preview for Mosquito State

    The film's distanced, sometimes esoteric approach does nothing to diminish the sense of threat.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    August 2007. Isolated in his austere penthouse overlooking Central Park, obsessive Wall Street data analyst Richard Boca sees ominous patterns. His computer models are behaving erratically, as are the swarms of mosquitos breeding in his apartment, an infestation that attends his psychological meltdown.
  • Nowhere Special
    Review preview for Nowhere Special

    There is something quite profound here about learning to achieve what you can in the moment and for making peace with a situation you are unable to change.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    John, a 35-year-old window cleaner, devotes his life to raising his young son Michael as a single dad, but after he's given only a few months to live, he tries to find the perfect set of adoptive parents.
  • The World To Come
    Review preview for The World To Come

    Overall, the story is a familiar one, with a predictably, one could even say, cliched tragic sweep - a well-trodden pioneer trail that while watchable for the fine performances, still feels overly stuck in a rut.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
    In upstate New York in the 1850s, Abigail begins a new year on the rural farm where she lives with her husband Dyer. But a friendship with the wife of a new neighbour leads to trouble.
  • Yellow Cat
    Review preview for Yellow Cat

    There's such a warmth to the comedy here that the inevitable tragic sweep of the film feels all the more steeped in sadness.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    An ex-con goes on the run with his new-found love, while chasing his dream of opening a cinema.
  • Zanka Contact
    Review preview for Zanka Contact

    The barest hooks of a narrative are here but stitched together with a lot of energy and stylish flourishes from cinematographer Benjamin Rufi.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    In hellish Casablanca, a car-crash sets ablaze a burning, passionate love story between has-been rocker Larsen and the streetwise Rajae.
  • The Ties
    Review preview for The Ties

    There is a miraculous playfulness to all this destructive behaviour. When one riddle is solved, another one appears.

    Anne-Katrin Titze · 5 out of 5
    Naples, early 1980s: Aldo and Vanda’s marriage finds itself on the rocks when Aldo falls in love with the young Lidia. Thirty years later, Aldo and Vanda are still married.
  • Gaza Mon Amour
    Review preview for Gaza Mon Amour

    There's a continual nagging sense that this was, perhaps, once two separate ideas for short films which the directors have grafted together in a way that means the film as a whole falls short.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old sherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works as a dressmaker at the market. Finally determined to propose, he discovers an ancient statue of Apollo in his fishing net, which he decides to hide at home. When Hamas discovers the existence of this mysterious treasure, troubles start for Issa... Will he succeed in declaring his love to Siham?

A–Z of Venice Film Festival 2020 reviews

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