Cartier Draws Young Hollywood to the Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival is the unofficial kickoff to Hollywood's awards season. The Lido is usually teeming with Riva yachts ferrying the most precious celebrity cargo on their way to premieres at the Palazzo del Cinema. The scene this year, however, was more muted, as the A-list mostly sat out promoting new movies in deference to the strikes for better wages that have brought the entertainment industry to a standstill. What the festival lacked in star power was made up by luxury brands, which invited marquee ambassadors to mark the 80th anniversary of the oldest film festival in the world. Few houses had a starrier selection of young Hollywood in attendance than Cartier, which has an unusually rich history with the world of film that stretches back to the silent era, when Rudolph Valentino refused to give up his Tank watch just because he was playing the title role in The Son of the Sheik. In his place today might be an actor like Paul Mescal, a Cartier ambassador who is soon to star in his own sword-and-sandal epic, the Gladiator prequel. He was joined at one of the maison's parties by The Crown's Emma Corrin, Euphoria's Maude Apatow, Roma's Yalitza Aparicio, and a couple of familiar faces from The White Lotus franchise, Beatrice Granno and Lukas Gage. This being Venice, you might say it was a high-water mark in La Serenissima for Cartier, which has been sponsoring the film festival for the past three years. In addition to presenting its annual Glory to the Filmmaker Award to Wes Anderson, who screened his latest, a 40-minute short adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Cartier also commissioned Ciao Casanova, a performance by the musician and artistic director Solrey that debuted at the Teatro la Fenice. The piece marked the beginning of Cartier's support for the ongoing preservation of the famed opera house, which will open its 2024 season in January with "Les Saisons," an adaptation of Vivalvi's "The Four Seasons." Book your tickets now. As Christopher Bollen once wrote in T&C, it is by supporting the city's cultural treasures that the world ensures the survival of "a living masterpiece."