Venice's Film Festival Ends, and the City Counts What It Costs

The Venice Film Festival closed on Saturday with its top prize going to 'Woman Unknown', a Danish drama directed by May el-Toukhy and set in the uneasy years after the Second World War, according to the New York Times. The runner-up award went to Lee Chang-dong's 'Possible Love'. The Local Italy noted that el-Toukhy's film was the only feature in competition directed by a woman, a detail foreign critics seized on as the festival's own reckoning.

The Lido is quiet now. What remains is the recurring question the foreign press asks every September: what does eleven days of red carpet, water taxis and hotel occupancy actually leave behind in a city of roughly 250,000 residents, a shrinking share of whom live in the historic centre at all?

That question is not new, and the festival is not its only cause. But the Biennale's autumn edition is the moment the world's arts press turns its full attention to Venice, and this year the coverage arrived alongside the usual infrastructure of a city that lives on visitors.