How to Make the Most of the Venice Film Festival, According to a Critic Who Goes Every Year

When one thinks of the Venice Film Festival, a few indelible, almost impossibly exotic images spring to mind. The most recent may be Lady Gaga with her legs coyly crossed over the side of a water taxi as she announced her arrival to town for the premiere of A Star Is Born. (Or, I suppose, Harry Styles maybe spitting on his Don’t Worry Darling co-star Chris Pine.) But there has been a wealth of such moments for many decades: Venice is the oldest event of its kind, first held in 1932 and running near continuously since then—minus a few gaps during the Second World War and during some severe political strife that rocked Italy in the 1970s.

The festival’s origins are, well, not great: it was founded by fascists loyal to Mussolini and, eventually, Axis powers. But in the many decades since, the festival has evolved into one of the so-called “Big Three” festivals of Europe, alongside winter’s Berlin Film Festival and the mid-spring glitz and madness of Cannes. It is a premier showcase for art-house international fare and, on a good year, glossy Oscar bait sent across the Atlantic by American studios debuting their latest prestige fare.

The red carpet buzzes at the premiere of Ink, the opening night film of the 2026 Venice Film Festival.

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Compared to Cannes, Venice is more relaxed—its screening schedule not so densely packed, its staff not quite as snooty, its dress codes more lax. The climate may often be punishing—high temperatures in baking sun, 100% humidity, mosquitoes suddenly filling the air at dusk—but Venice is nonetheless regarded by many people on the festival circuit as the jewel in the crown, one of high programming quality and easy glamour.

Lido v. San Marco: The Eternal War

It’s not hard to be glamorous when your event is held in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, that floating tangle of red buildings and snaking canals. Well, that’s where a lot of the nighttime events are, anyway. All of the screenings, meanwhile, are held on the Lido, a barrier island dotted with low-key beach clubs (and one decidedly high-key one, at the ritzy Excelsior Hotel, where cabanas can go for hundreds of Euros per day). A small town center with a few restaurants and lots of retirees is home to the festival headquarters. Some people—industry professionals, veteran critics, publicists, and awards strategists—are near-religiously committed to staying on the Lido, where you can walk (or bike, or e-scooter) to screenings without having to deal with the vaporetti, the lurching water buses that ferry people around Venice’s many islands.

Me, I figure that if I’m going to be in Venice, I want to be in actual Venice. In the years that I’ve been going to the festival (as the chief critic of Vanity Fair until last year), I’ve always stayed on San Marco island, the center of the city’s tourism industry and the host of its most iconic images: the eponymous Piazza with its tall brick tower and ornate palace, the Bridge of Sighs, that cute gondolier you keep seeing as he poles his boat under the Rialto Bridge. Traveling between San Marco and the Lido is one of the more grumbled-about aspects of the festival, though I’ve mostly found it easy enough over the years. One simply hops on the number 20 vaporetto at San Zaccaria (just a tiny bit south and east of Piazza San Marco) and, maybe 20 minutes later, the boat drops you off on the festival grounds. Lines can get long if you don’t time things right—a crush of people all trying to make the same movie in 45 minutes can be a harrowing mess—but if you give yourself a wider berth, the boats are calm and manageable and then you can while away your extra time on the Lido by having a bite at one of the festival’s snack bars or a drink on the charming terrace of the old-school Albergo Quattro Fontane, right across the street. (Hopefully in the shade; again, that sun is brutal.)