Venice Market Kicks Off With Robust Numbers, an Added Day, and Stronger Latin American and Middle East Presence

Just as George Clooney and Adam Sandler hit the Lido for Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” the Venice Production Bridge is kicking off with some 3,300 film industry executives – roughly 1,400 of which are producers – set to disembark for the 12th edition of the informal indie market that is broadening its scope.

The attendance figures are slightly greater than the past two editions, which saw surging attendance.

“It’s a very dense market with a lot of different projects and events over five days. So I added an additional day, to spread them out,” says VPB head Pascal Diot, the mastermind behind this innovative space dedicated primarily to production and less on being a sales and buying event. 

This year’s gap-financing platform component sees 40 feature-length fiction and documentary projects, and 14 immersive projects on display. The selection indicates that feature-length docs are a growing trend, says Diot. There are seven high-profile docs “that tackle past and present historical subjects” being pitched, including one from two-time Oscar-nominated Macedonian filmmaker Tamara Kotevska (“Honeyland”) that is set in Sibera, titled “The Mammoths That Escaped the Kingdom of Erlik Khan.”

Standout feature films seeking a piece of financing at the VPB include “Distances,” a new drama by Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl (“Rimini”); “A Town in Nova Scotia,” which is a new project by U.K.-based Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali (“Fremont”) and “Tarfaya,” a Morocco-set thriller that is the next work from Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui, who won the 2023 Sundance jury prize for “Animalia.”

The U.K., Chile and Morocco are this year’s countries in focus, the latter two being selected, “since they
don’t really have an immersive industry but are actively looking to build one,” Diot says.

Besides being focused on production, the other aspect that makes the VPB unique is its Venice Immersive Market component, located on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, a short boat ride from the Lido, which is focused on offering global Virtual Reality and immersive industry professionals a wide range of projects and networking opportunities. Companies attending include Google, HTC and Apple.

Diot pointed out that the distribution possibilities of VR are increasing. It’s not only being shown in a few dedicated theaters. “Now some countries have immersive arcades, just like you had video game arcades in the past,” he says. And more cultural venues, such as museums, want to display immersive works. “This opens the doors for immersive works to travel more and not just be for the geeks,” Diot notes.

Venice was the world’s first A-list festival to launch a VR competition, debuting the section in 2017, and its Venice Immersive remains the top global platform for immersive and XR works.

As for geographic trends, there is a stronger Latin American presence this year, and more industry professionals from the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia, while the numbers of attendees from Japan and China are down. “Japan is not used to co-producing,” notes Diot. While in China, which used to have a strong presence at the VPB, “it’s become more difficulty to produce these days due to censorship.”

On the positive side, conflict-torn Yemen has been added as a country to the VPB’s Final Cut in Venice component dedicated to supporting African and Arab films in their final post-production stages. There are two projects from Yemen being pitched on the Lido: Mariam Al-Dhubhani’s doc ”Let’s Play Soldiers” and Yemeni-Scottish film director Sara Ishaq’s drama “The Station.”

The 12th edition of the Venice Production Bridge will run through Sept. 3