Organisers in Venice paused all screenings on Saturday after a guest crossed the carpet toward the lagoon instead of away from it.
The Venice Film Festival suspended all screenings on Saturday after a guest crossed the red carpet in the wrong direction. A panel of fourteen has been seated on the Lido to rule on the correct orientation. Films by Danny Boyle and an Oasis documentary screened in the meantime, largely unnoticed.
The Venice Film Festival stopped everything on Saturday afternoon to settle the direction of its red carpet. Screenings were suspended for fourteen hours. A panel of fourteen people was seated in a hotel dining room on the Lido to rule on the matter.
Sources close to the velvet rope say the trouble started at the early evening arrivals. A guest stepped onto the carpet and walked toward the water rather than toward the doors. Photographers, who had spent the day facing one way, were left shooting the back of a jacket.
"The carpet has run lagoon to lobby since 1932," said Marcello Bevilacqua, who oversees carpet orientation for the festival. "On Saturday it ran lobby to lagoon. You cannot simply reverse a tradition and expect the light to cooperate."
Bevilacqua confirmed the carpet was rolled up and stood on its end behind a barrier while the panel works. Guests have since been arriving directly onto the tiles. Two publicists described the tiles as "acoustically wrong".
Insiders insist the panic is bigger than one guest. Every step-and-repeat position on the Lido was mapped around the old direction. Reverse it, and fourteen carefully negotiated standing spots become worthless overnight.
"If the carpet turns around, so does the entire pecking order. People have built careers on being third from the left."
That was Tonya Vesper, a Los Angeles publicist who flew in for the week and has not slept since Friday. She says her clients are being briefed hourly. "Nobody moves until the panel rules," she said. "We are treating the tiles as a holding area."
Meanwhile, inside the cinema
Some films did screen. Danny Boyle's Ink opened the festival with Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, and further titles feature Robert Pattinson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Dakota Johnson, Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella. Reviews have been going up steadily on Deadline, where critics appear entirely unaware of the crisis outside and keep writing about the movies instead, which several people on the Lido now consider a deliberate snub.
An Oasis reunion tour documentary also premiered. A festival aide described that as "scheduling filler" and asked reporters to keep it brief.
Fashion coverage has carried on regardless. Fox News ran a reader poll on the best arrivals looks, including Sydney Sweeney, Brittany Snow and Nina Dobrev, which insiders say only proves the carpet matters more than what happens on top of it.
Bevilacqua said the panel will publish its finding once it has reviewed archive photographs going back to the first edition. Until then, the carpet stays vertical. "A festival can survive a bad film," he said. "It cannot survive an ambiguous carpet."
