The 77th version of the pageant is likely one of the first main cultural occasions to happen in Europe for the reason that coronavirus pandemic took maintain on the continent, with the Cannes Movie Competition canceling its 2020 occasion in Might.
These security measures embrace necessary face masks, temperature checks, bodily distancing throughout screenings and a wall constructed across the purple carpet to maintain the general public away.

Tilda Swinton arrives for the pageant’s opening ceremony and first screening holding a customized sea creature-inspired masks by artist James Merry. Credit score: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Photos
Actor and jury president Cate Blanchett greeted pageant director Alberto Barbera by touching elbows, with each carrying masks. Blanchett paired hers with an Esteban Cortazar cape costume she had beforehand worn to the “Carol” premiere on the 2015 London Movie Competition.
Elsewhere, mannequin Taylor Hill hit the purple carpet in an Etro crystal-embroidered floral chiffon robe, whereas Roberta Armani impressed in a vivid blue quantity from her uncle Giorgio’s namesake label. “Sport of Thrones” actor Nathalie Emmanuel made a press release by carrying a Miu Miu Ladies’s Tales T-shirt honoring ladies administrators. The shirt she selected, which she paired with a fitted ankle-length blue skirt, featured stills from an Ava DuVernay brief movie.
On the premiere of the drama “Mainstream,” starring Maya Hawke and Andrew Garfield, Hawke wowed in a Versace mermaid robe with embroidered Swarovski crystals and a waterfall impact of gold appliqué. Director Gia Coppola joined her — socially distanced on the carpet — in a tiered multicolor Gucci costume with billowing sleeves and excessive collar.

Director Gia Coppola and actor Maya Hawke and on the purple carpet for the drama “Mainstream.” Credit score: Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Photos
On the premiere of the buzzy interval love story “The World to Come,” starring Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston and Casey Affleck, Kirby regarded easy in a plunging black Armani go well with.
The way forward for cinema
This 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition opened with the premiere of “Lacci,” a romantic drama directed by Daniele Luchetti. The film, which is ready in Naples and depicts a wedding on the brink, has been in comparison with Noah Baumbach’s 2019 hit “Marriage Story.” The pageant additionally noticed the premieres of flicks together with the Greta Thunberg biopic “Greta,” Pedro Almodóvar’s Swinton-led “The Human Voice,” and the moody Frances McDormand street journey story “Nomadland.”
On September 7, Regina King made historical past as the primary Black girl to have a directorial debut on the pageant. Her movie, “One Night time in Miami,” is an adaptation of a Kemp Powers play (first staged in 2013) about an actual assembly that came about in 1964 between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke.
A quick historical past of the purple carpet
On stage on the opening ceremony, pageant director Barbera voiced his concern about the way forward for cinema, because the pandemic might give streaming companies an extra edge over theaters. “The sensation of watching a movie on the big display with different folks is within the very nature of the movie business,” he stated. “We now have to assist cinemas. Many are nonetheless closed right this moment, others won’t ever open once more.”
Whereas accepting her Lifetime Achievement award, Swinton emphasised the tenacity of the movie business: “To come back to Venice, this 12 months of all years, to have a good time immortal cinema and her defiant survival within the face of all of the challenges that evolution would possibly throw at her — as at us all — will likely be my honest pleasure.”
This 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition is being held on the Venice Lido and runs from September 2-12, 2020.
Scroll by the gallery above to see the perfect seems from Venice Movie Competition’s purple carpet. The gallery will likely be up to date all through the occasion.