Beyond the Red Carpet: The True Venice Film Story Unfolds Backstage
At the Lido there’s more than just the red carpet: there’s the off-screen, the counter-shot, life flowing between scattered spritzes, oversized sunglasses, and a parade of characters moving as if the whole city were an improvised set.
Say Who’s photographers went roaming through alleys, beaches, and the halls of the Excelsior, composing an album of presences that feels like a dissonant score. There’s Pierfrancesco Favino, star of Il Maestro, walking beside his partner Anna Ferzetti, who shines in Paolo Sorrentino’s latest work La Grazia. Then Michelle Lamy, designer and fashion shaman, who once decided to bet on Rick Owens. There’s Giovanni Malagò, former CONI president, crossing the corso with Elena Vaccarella. Stefano Accorsi and Elisabetta Gregoraci make their appearance too. And Eva Herzigova resurfaces like a déjà vu from the ’90s—an ageless beauty, suspended in time.
Everything else is background noise: hyperactive actors, insiders pretending not to be there, fans moonlighting as paparazzi. It’s within this flow that the Venice Film Festival reveals its most elusive truth: less myth, more flesh. Because in the end, at the Lido, what happens backstage is often more compelling than what glitters under the spotlights.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Niccolò Campita and Ludovica Arcero
