How Italian cinema is using the Hollywood strike to its advantage Without Timothée Chalamet and company on the red carpet, Italian films can finally achieve more success

The Venice Film Festival has always hosted Italian films, but never more than three. This year, the screens of the lagoon counted no less than six Italian presences, the highest number of the last 25 years, and a selection of particularly ambitious films, whose budgets exceeded 7 million euros - a figure that until a decade ago was considered very expensive for Italian productions. Italian films have changed a lot since the pandemic and today, in order to catch up, they aim to attract a new type of spectator. With the increase in public subsidies for cinema, Italian productions have become bigger and better as many are designed to reach wider audiences, even abroad. With this in mind, Italian cinema has started do indulge in genres that previously weren't usually considered in its chords such as war films, fantasies and even detective stories, all the while maintaining high technical standards - on the wave of successes such as Gomorrah, which were greatly appreciated abroad.

Why is Hollywood on strike? 

The distribution of Italian films, in our country and abroad, struggles to compete with American films - which have much higher budgets and can exploit world-famous actors and actresses. As a result of the strikes, which have generated delays throughout the distribution chain, Hollywood studios have already moved the release date of films of great media importance, such as Dune 2, starring Timothée Chalamet, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim (a spin-off of The Lord Of The Rings). Challengers, Luca Guadagnino's film starring Zendaya that was supposed to open the Venice Film Festival, also ended up in this spiral: in its place was an Italian film, Comandante by Edoardo De Angelis, starring Pierfrancesco Favino as a submarine commander during the Second World War. Although the two films will evidently play different leagues, it is a coincidence that in some ways demonstrates the space that Italian cinema is taking and will continue to take in the coming months.