The 61st International Film Festival, organised by the Biennale di Venezia and presided over by Davide Croff, will be held at the Lido from 1st to 11th September 2004, directed for the first time by Marco Müller.

The new lines of an "agile, competitive" Festival

Following his nomination by the Biennale's board of directors, the new director immediately declared that he hoped the 61st Festival "would be an agile festival, created in a climate of constant dialogue with the film industry and culture, both within Italy and abroad". This intention is now repeated and more clearly defined with the new programming structure of the event. "The Festival is a selection, not a programme", declared Marco Müller. "It cannot present the entire spectrum of today's film-making: even with the best will in the world, this would end up as an anthology of 'everything is the contrary of everything else'. There remains a question of hierarchy and priorities: some films are better than others".

This more balanced structure of the programming of the Official selection, comprising about 60 films overall, will therefore include:

- the Competition (20 films), in which art films will challenge the best mainstream films (artistic/commercial works), but with attention paid also to young cinema and films from around the world.

- the Non-competing screenings (3-4 films), which enable great directors of world-wide cinema to present their new works in the most prestigious of settings.

- the parallel section, Venezia Orizzonti (16-17 films), where the new trends of international cinema can find a space.

- the Venezia Mezzanotte section, which will present highly spectacular films, with a regard especially for those attracting a young public to the Festival.

- the new Venezia Digital section (10 films), which will make it possible to x-ray the state of things in a veritable "film-making continent" (feature films produced and screened in digital format or to be watched on DVD or video).

- the customary Venezia Corto/Cortissimo (4 programmes of 100' each).

The National Syndicate of Italian Film Critics organizes also for this edition the International Critics' Week, a series of seven films - first works - independently selected by a commission nominated by the Critics' Syndicate in accordance with its own regulations, which will continue to fulfil its function of "counterpoint" to the Competition, revealing new young talents.

In the wake of a "dynamic" tradition

The new programming structure will be combined with a retrospective gaze which will repropose many of the best solutions of past editions of the Venice Film Festival in a duly updated and dynamic manner, starting with the editions directed by Carlo Lizzani at the start of the 1980s. This will mainly involve the Venice Midnight section, picking up on the formula Enzo Ungari had invented for the Lizzani years, and which was successfully used also by Biraghi. This responds to a strategic concept that confirms the Festival as a world-wide event of absolute prestige, highlights the importance of its tradition and the beauty of the location, Venice and the Lido.