Venice’s informal indie market, the Venice Production Bridge, kicked off Sept. 4 with some 4,000 film industry executives — almost half of which are producers — in attendance on the Lido, where 37 feature-length fiction and documentary projects, and 14 immersive projects, will be on display at the VPB’s gap-financing platform.
A new addition to the calendar is the Toronto Intl. Film Festival’s high-profile film market, known as TIFF: The Market, which debuts Sept. 10, the day after VPB ends. It could expand the fierce competition for prime film premieres between the Venice and Toronto fests into the film market space.
But VPB chief Pascal Diot seems unperturbed.
“So far, the Toronto market has not had any impact on our numbers,” said Diot, who specified that, besides attracting plenty of producers, he also has the same number of sales agents and distributors coming to the Lido this year.
Diot added that he knows that some executives who are now in Venice have also been invited to Toronto, noting that “we will see what happens next year.”
