venice film festival
A couple weekends back I headed to Venice for the day to go to the Venice Film Festival with Tim, a work colleague and Eryn who I met through twitter. Being only a few hours from Venice we thought we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the famous festival and maybe spot a celebrity or two. So a few months before the festival I checked out website but it didn’t prove very useful.
As it turns out the list of movies that will be shown are only made available a few weeks before the event and tickets are only available to buy online at around that time. (In retrospect it makes a sense as it is a competition that needs entries). Up until this point I had thought we would have to head to Venice the day before to buy tickets at the box office, which would have been a bit of a pain, especially if we couldn’t get tickets. However, buying tickets online was pretty easy and the tickets were emailed to us and we could just show the barcode to gain access. Tickets for the day time and not in the ‘Grand Cinema’ were very reasonably priced at €9 each. The earlier show was pretty empty so you could probably buy tickets on the day. Although we were there on the last day so don’t quote me on that!
When the day finally dawned we got the train and then a vaperetto from the main station to the Lido (after grabbing breakfast of course). The cinema complex is about a 15 minutes walk from the vaperetto stop through a residential section of the island. I quite like the Lido. It feels like a beach town and has some beautiful art deco architecture.
We arrived a few minutes before our first movie started, Words with Gods. This was a series of short films which explored various religions around the world. I didn’t ‘get’ all of the references I am sure but it was still really interesting.
After our first movie we had 10 minutes before our second movie The President, which is the story of a dictator attempting to escape with his little grandson from a country that has turned against him. Dachi Orvelashvili played the role of the grandson absolutely brilliantly.
Both movies were subtitled, which meant this was they were the first movies we had actually seen in Italy since moving here and that made it even more of a treat!
Sadly we didn’t spot any celebrities …
After the movies we headed back to the main island groups and had an apertivo at a converted greenhouse where Tim and I had gone on my birthday and Eryn was keen to visit. We then took up our friend’s food suggestion and headed to Osteria al Portego where I was finally able to try chichetti (Venetian pre-dinner nibbles) and had a delicious plate of pasta with mushrooms. The chalkboard menu didn’t have any vegetarian options but when we phoned to make a reservation we were informed of several options (a rarity for veggies going out on the Continent). I would definitely recommend this place if you are in Venice.
I then promptly fell asleep for the two hour train ride home!
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