The All-Important Awards Calendar
The single biggest factor in the Cannes vs. Venice debate is timing. The Cannes Film Festival happens in May. The Venice Film Festival happens in late August or early September. For a studio with a film they believe is a real Academy Awards contender, this is a night-and-day difference. A rapturous premiere at Cannes is great, but it’s a long, treacherous four months until the fall season kicks off. Buzz can fade. A competing film can steal the narrative. The public can simply forget. Venice, on the other hand, perfectly coincides with the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, forming a powerful trifecta that officially kicks off the Oscar race. A big splash in Venice means a film enters the most crucial phase of its campaign with maximum momentum.
It goes from the Lido's red carpet directly into the industry’s awards-season consciousness. Think of films like Joker, La La Land, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland—all launched at Venice and went on to major Oscar success. For an awards campaign, May is a risky pre-season game; September is the season opener.
Managing Pressure and Expectations
Cannes is the undisputed king of festival prestige, but with great power comes great pressure. The French festival’s critical environment is notoriously intense. A film that receives a lukewarm reception or, worse, a smattering of boos during its press screening (a Cannes tradition), can see its entire narrative torpedoed before it even gets started. The international media is hyper-concentrated, and the competition for the Palme d'Or is fierce. For a studio, this is a high-risk, high-reward bet.
Venice, while still prestigious, offers a slightly more controlled environment. It’s seen as less of a critical pressure cooker and more of a launchpad. The goal isn't necessarily to win the top prize (the Golden Lion) but to generate glowing reviews and build a groundswell of support. A studio can use Venice to carefully craft a film’s story—positioning a genre film like Dune as a serious cinematic achievement or a controversial film like Joker as a must-see masterpiece. It's about setting the terms of the conversation, and Venice often provides a more favorable stage to do so.
The Practical Problem: Is the Film Even Finished?
Beyond grand strategy, there's a simple, logistical reason many big films skip Cannes: they aren’t ready. A May deadline is incredibly tight for a major studio tentpole or a complex auteur film slated for a fall or winter release. Post-production, which includes everything from visual effects and sound mixing to final color grading, is a sprawling, expensive process. Rushing a film to meet the Cannes submission window can mean compromising its quality or showing an unfinished version.
Studios would much rather give their directors and technical crews the extra three months to polish the film to perfection for a Venice debut. This ensures the version of the film that critics and audiences see is the absolute best it can be, eliminating the risk of a premiere being undermined by unfinished effects or a temporary score. The September slot simply aligns better with the production schedules of most major English-language films.
Festival Politics and Modern Realities
Finally, there are the politics of the festivals themselves. For years, Cannes has had a famously strict rule requiring competing films to have a planned theatrical release in France. This led to a very public and ongoing feud with Netflix, which prefers a global streaming-first model. While some streamers have found workarounds, the relationship can be tense. Venice, by contrast, has been far more welcoming to streaming giants, premiering major Netflix films like Roma and The Power of the Dog in its main competition.
This flexibility makes Venice a more attractive partner for studios and platforms that don't fit neatly into the traditional theatrical model. By embracing the changing landscape of film distribution, Venice has positioned itself as the more modern, pragmatic, and business-friendly option for many of Hollywood's most powerful players, further solidifying its role as the de facto starting line for the American film industry's most important season.
