In Venice, it’s not politics as usual as film-makers aim to recapture our attention
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Venice Film Festival (opening 2 September) features politically charged documentaries running from 3 to 7+ hours, including Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium, Alex Gibney's Musk, Julia Loktev's My Undesirable Friends: Part II, and Luca Guadagnino's 7-hour Joie de Vivre
- Over 70,000 people crossed from Morocco into Spain's Ceuta enclave, prompting Rome to reintroduce air and sea border checks with Spain and Madrid to retaliate with spot-checks on Italy-bound travelers
- The Ceuta crossings were reportedly triggered by viral videos suggesting Spain's border was opening, with 'invasion' framing amplified by accounts linked to the Russian military, as Aisha Down reported
- The Guardian and Arte are inviting short-form documentary submissions (max 20 minutes) on democracy in Europe; the deadline is 14 September, and the winning film will be presented at DOK Leipzig in late October with funding, editorial support, and distribution through both outlets
- Jess Gormley, the Guardian's executive producer of documentaries, argues the 20-minute length 'encourages participation and debate'
- The Oath — a 23-minute Guardian documentary by Liane Aviram and Louis Hollis about a Palestinian doctor in Israel's healthcare system — led to its protagonist being invited to speak before the UK parliament
Why it matters: The article frames Europe's political discourse as increasingly shaped by viral, short-form processing — the Ceuta crisis was reportedly engineered and amplified through social clips — while Venice's marathon documentaries and the Guardian/Arte 20-minute format represent two competing responses to that shrinkage. Filmmakers submitting by the 14 September deadline gain a funded distribution pipeline, and the partnership explicitly tests whether mid-length work can replicate the real-world impact (parliamentary testimony) that *The Oath* achieved.
Ask SkimNews
