Lights On, Curtain Rising

The air is tinged with salt and possibility, golden light dances across the waves, and Venice prepares to step back into the spotlight. The island becomes a stage without borders, where cinema turns into experience: a dream, a reflection, a memory in motion.

As the Venice International Film Festival returns for its 2025 edition, it promises fresh perspectives, bold voices, and powerful emotions shaped by the shimmering tide of the lagoon. This is cinema that doesn’t just tell stories, it transforms them into visceral, living moments.

New Visions, Legendary Voices

This year’s edition invites audiences into a cinematic landscape that’s ever-changing and daringly global. On the Lido, masterpieces from renowned directors share the screen with rising auteurs unafraid to push boundaries.

Highlights include Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, Le mage du Kremlin by Olivier Assayas, Jay Kelly by Noah Baumbach, and The Voice of Hind Rajab by Kaouther Ben Hania. Kathryn Bigelow returns with A House of Dynamite, while Gianfranco Rosi and Jim Jarmusch bring poetic explorations in Sotto le Nuvole and Father Mother Sister Brother. These films weave a larger tapestry, one of politics, identity, memory, and emotion. It’s a festival of contrasts: raw intimacy and sweeping spectacle, legend and innovation, light and shadow. Venice, as always, is not just a setting, it’s a co-creator of meaning.

Excelsior & Lido: Where the Magic Lives

As the spotlight turns to the Lido once again, the island transforms into a living film set: vibrant, elegant, suspended in time. And at the centre of it all: Hotel Excelsior, the beating heart of the Festival.

This is where it all converges, press conferences, red carpet arrivals, and whispered conversations between stars and storytellers. Sleek water taxis pull into the hotel’s private dock, champagne flutes catch the light, and the hotel’s iconic Moorish façade becomes a backdrop for the world’s most exclusive interviews.

From the historic salons filled with filmmakers and guests, to the intimate buzz of the Blue Bar, every corner of the Excelsior pulses with cinematic energy. Mornings bring panels and premieres; nights give way to toasts, music, and celebration. And for those who stay at the Excelsior, you’re not just watching the story unfold. You’re in it.

Live the Film Festival Festival from the Inside Out

To stay at the Excelsior during the Film Festival is to live inside the script — unscripted. It’s private dinners under starlit skies, timeless rooms with views that silence you, and passing moments with the very people shaping the future of cinema.

From the dock to the beach, the terraces to the Blue Bar, every space is part of a seamless narrative. Here, luxury is more than service, it’s access, ambiance, and presence. At Hotel Excelsior, every guest becomes a leading character in a story that can’t be replicated, only lived.