Venice Festival Chief Barbera Addresses Gaza Doc Timing, AI Films, and a Reinstated Jury Press Conference
Alberto Barbera, the 76-year-old artistic director of the Venice Film Festival, has addressed the political pressures shaping this year's edition — from the scheduling of a Gaza documentary to a cancelled and then reinstated jury press conference — in a wide-ranging interview published on 6 September by Deadline.
The Gaza documentary "NAZA," directed by Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor — the duo behind the Oscar-winning "No Other Land" — and produced by The Guardian, was added to the competition lineup of the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 24 August (La Biennale). The film examines Israeli military killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza (Hollywood Reporter). It is set to screen in the Sala Grande, the festival's main hall, on 10 September at 5.15pm, with its directors and producers present (La Biennale).
Barbera told Deadline that "NAZA" was scheduled late in the festival deliberately. He said he did not want politics to become the only topic of conversation and overshadow other films. He gave a similar practical reason for the late placement of the Russian film "DAU," citing its length and the difficulty of fitting it into an early slot.
The festival has also faced pressure from the Venice4Palestine group, which has been petitioning for greater support for Palestine. Barbera said the group had exchanged emails with the festival but had not spoken by phone. He explained that a Palestinian flag cannot be flown over the Venice red carpet alongside other countries' flags because the Italian government does not recognise the state of Palestine and requires adherence to state-controlled flag protocol.
Separately, Barbera said the festival's jury press conference was cancelled amid fears of politicisation and then reinstated following outcry. He did not elaborate on who raised the outcry or what specific political concerns drove the initial cancellation.
The Hollywood Reporter described the 2026 Venice lineup as the festival's "most political ever" (Hollywood Reporter). Beyond geopolitics, Barbera pointed to a different kind of shift arriving on the Lido. He predicted many more films made with artificial intelligence in future festival selections, comparing the A.I. transition to the digital revolution of the late 1990s. He said many film-makers and studios are already using A.I. without disclosing it, because it is cheaper, faster, and can produce results better than traditional CGI — computer-generated imagery. Barbera cited Danny Boyle's "Ink," the festival's opening film, as a production that used A.I. in its making. For the first time, the Venice official selection also includes a documentary almost entirely made with A.I.
Not everything on the Lido this year has been heavy. Barbera attended the premiere of the Oasis documentary, which he said had a rock-concert atmosphere — people laughing, clapping, and singing along.
This is not the first time Barbera has addressed charged questions about his programming choices. In July 2020, he said Venice's selections were made "exclusively on the basis of their quality and not as a result of gender protocols" (Deadline). Six years on, the questions have shifted from gender to geopolitics and generative technology — but the programming logic, as Barbera tells it, has not.
