After getting upstaged by Cannes at this year’s Oscars, when Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora took best picture over Brady Corbet’s Lido champ The Brutalist — Venice has come back.

Venice Fest, with its blend of prestige auteurs, big-name debuts and politically charged features, reaffirms the Lido as the premiere launchpad for Oscar award hopefuls.

Highlights this year include Julia Roberts in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, Dwayne Johnson in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine and a triple threat from Netflix: Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein starring Jacob Elordi, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly with George Clooney and Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite with Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson.

Also new features from Lanthimos, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook, François Ozon, Paolo Sorrentino, Mona Fastvold, Gus van Sant, Julian Schnabel, Mamoru Hosoda and Laszlo Nemes, and the political heft of Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza drama The Voice of Hind Rajab and Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin (with Jude Law as Vladimir Putin), and you have one of best Venice festivals in years.

Venice artistic director Barbera spoke about the fierce but friendly rivalry between the major festivals, the challenge of showing lengthy epics and why politics are back on screen.

Cannes, Venice, Toronto Fests: Competition

But this competition is a way to push you to get the best out of the submitted films.

Measuring success for festival?

The first element is the way the film is accepted during the festival, the response of both critics and audiences to the film. That’s the first moment when you realize if you made a good choice or if you were wrong. Because when you invite one film, it means you give up the chance to invite another. It always happens that this or the other film doesn’t meet the expectations created when we announced the lineup.

That first moment when the film screens is when I realize if I did a good job or not.

Then, of course, if the film travels to other festivals or gets awards, if it goes to or wins the Oscars, which happens a lot, that helps to confirm the position of the festival, of our position in the calendar of festivals, gives us chance the following year to get access to the most interesting and important films of the season.

That was decision by Amazon MGM. From the beginning, when they showed the film to us, they told us “We don’t want to be in competition. This is a film we believe in. It’s our candidate for Oscars. It doesn’t need to be in competition.” I respect the decision of producers, most of the time.

Stars Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson making Venice debuts?

I’m sure they know how to behave. They are great professionals. They are delivering exceptional performances in the films. Both Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson are really outstanding. I’m very happy to have them in Venice. We have a wonderful new audience, very warm, gentle. The experience here is easier for talents than at other festivals.

More people are coming to Venice

A lot of pressures. Well, not on the festival itself, because we have a lot of seats, a lot of theaters, to accommodate everybody. The pressure is put on the infrastructure outside the festival, the hotels, restaurants. Venice is one of the most touristic places in the world, with a lot of events in August and  September. There are a lot of people coming in for other events. It’s difficult to find hotels, and it’s becoming more and more expensive.

It’s difficult to do something regarding the hotels, the cost of rooms,  restaurants and so on. The infrastructure is just not there. I know there is an issue for some independent journalists to get access to interviews with stars, but again, this is out of our control. It’s the decision of the production or the press agent for each film. I try to convince them to be more open and available, but they often only stay 48 hours, 72 hours in Venice, because of the cost, so it’s difficult to meet all the requests they get from journalists. It’s a major problem, but I don’t know what we can do to solve it.

Films are getting longer and longer

This is a trend that started two years ago and has become major trend. Most films are two hours and 30 minutes long or longer.

Political films

They are all very strong films in of themselves. Not only emotional but excellent films dealing with contemporary issues. Most films this year are dealing with contemporary problems. Whether it’s the use of atomic weapons [A House of Dynamite], horrors of the wars in Ukraine or Gaza, looking at dictatorships in many countries in the world.

It’s the comeback of the cinema of reality, and it’s important that the festival is open to the contemporary world and not closed off inside the universe of films and cinema of dreams.

Netflix is also back in force this year

They couldn’t come last year because they didn’t have any films to offer, but they have 3 strong films this year, from Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Baumbach and  Guillermo de Toro. We worried if it was a good idea to have 3 films from Netflix in the main competition, but they are all so good, they deserve to be in.

Worries that your streak at Venice end, that this could be the last good year?

Every time. After every festival, I tell myself, I won’t be able to do as strong a lineup next year. And then we are lucky enough to get access to the most interesting films of the season. And this is the case again, for this year at least.