Every year, there comes a moment when Venice begins to feel slightly different.

The canals and palazzi are the same, the vaporetti continue to cross the lagoon, and the summer crowds still move between Rialto and St Mark's Square. Yet as August approaches its final weeks, another rhythm gradually becomes noticeable. Water taxis become busier. Hotel lobbies fill with international guests. Production teams, journalists and photographers begin arriving. Across the lagoon, the Lido prepares to become one of the most closely watched places in the film world.

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival will take place from 2 to 12 September 2026, bringing cinema — and the international community surrounding it — back to Venice.

For ten days, premieres, screenings and official appearances will dominate entertainment coverage around the world. Actors and directors will step onto the red carpet, photographers will compete for the defining images of each evening, and films shown in Venice will begin journeys that may continue through the international awards season.

But the festival changes much more than the red carpet.

For those who live and work in Venice, its arrival can be felt far beyond the screening rooms of the Lido. It temporarily changes the atmosphere of the entire city.

When the film world arrives in Venice

The Venice Film Festival has always possessed something that distinguishes it from many other major international film events: its extraordinary setting.

Guests do not simply arrive at a convention centre or drive to a cinema. They arrive in a city built on water.

The journey itself becomes part of the spectacle.

Images of actors and filmmakers arriving by boat have become almost as recognizable as photographs from the red carpet. A polished wooden water taxi crossing the lagoon, a guest stepping onto a pier beside a historic hotel, or the silhouette of Venice appearing behind them provides a visual language that belongs specifically to this festival.

During the festival period, this cinematic quality spreads throughout the city.

The Lido remains the official centre of activity, but many guests stay elsewhere in Venice. Meetings take place in hotels and restaurants. Private dinners, receptions and informal gatherings continue after the screenings end. Fashion, cinema, hospitality and luxury travel begin to overlap.

For visitors who happen to be in Venice at the same time, the transformation can be subtle. There are no enormous festival structures occupying the historic centre. Instead, the event appears in fragments: a familiar face entering a hotel, photographers waiting near a landing stage, a line of water taxis moving across the lagoon, or an unusually glamorous group passing through a street that looked completely ordinary an hour earlier.

Venice absorbs the festival rather than surrendering itself to it.

A city made for cinema

There is an obvious reason why images from Venice during the festival are so powerful.

The city already looks like a film set.

Its visual identity is unusually resistant to modern distractions. There are no cars crossing the historic centre, no conventional roads and relatively little of the visual infrastructure that defines most contemporary cities. Movement happens on foot or by boat, often against architecture that has survived for centuries.

For photographers and filmmakers, this creates an unusual relationship between a person and the surrounding city.

A portrait made beside a canal does not necessarily need a famous landmark to establish its location. The texture of a wall, the shape of a bridge, the light reflected from the water or the interior of a water taxi can already say Venice.

The city also changes constantly with the light.

Early morning Venice can be quiet and almost monochromatic. By midday, the lagoon becomes bright and reflective. In the evening, stone façades become warmer and artificial light begins to appear in windows, restaurants and boats.

During festival season, another element is added to this visual environment: people who are themselves accustomed to being photographed.

Actors, directors, musicians, models, influencers and other public figures arrive in Venice for premieres, professional commitments, brand events and private engagements. Some remain only briefly. Others spend several days in the city.

And only a small part of that time takes place on the red carpet.

Beyond the red carpet

The most visible photography surrounding any major film festival is press photography.

It is fast, public and highly organized. Dozens of photographers may photograph the same person within a few minutes, producing images that can appear around the world almost immediately.

But there is another kind of photography taking place around events such as Venice, one that receives considerably less attention precisely because it is designed to remain private.

High-profile guests do not stop having personal lives when their official appearances end.

They travel between hotels and events. They meet friends. They have dinners, explore the city, attend private functions or simply have a few free hours between professional commitments.

Some choose to have those parts of their stay documented as well.

This is where the role of a private personal photographer becomes very different from that of a press photographer or paparazzo.

Rather than waiting for many people, the photographer works with one particular person or party. He may spend several hours with a client or accompany them through a significant part of the day. The objective is not to capture a single newsworthy arrival but to create a visual record of an experience.

Venice-based photographer Antonio Jarosso works in this field, accompanying celebrities, influencers and private clients during their time in Venice and elsewhere in Italy.

The distinction is important. This is not photography from behind a barrier and it is not the traditional structure of a photo shoot where every image is carefully staged. The photographer temporarily becomes part of the client's immediate environment.

A day may move from a hotel to a water taxi, from a scheduled appointment to lunch, and later through the city to an evening engagement. Some moments may be intentionally photographed; others happen naturally along the way.

The result sits somewhere between portraiture and visual reportage.

The photographer who needs to disappear

Working this closely with a public figure creates a peculiar photographic challenge.

Access alone does not produce intimate photographs.

In fact, the physical presence of a camera can easily have the opposite effect. If someone remains conscious of being photographed every minute, ordinary behaviour disappears. Expressions change, gestures become deliberate and what was intended as documentation begins to resemble a continuous photo shoot.

For a private photographer, therefore, one of the most valuable skills can be knowing when not to interfere.

There are moments to suggest a location, adjust a position or take advantage of particularly good light. There are others when the photographer simply observes.

Over several hours, something important can happen: the camera gradually stops being an event.

That familiarity makes possible a category of images that cannot easily be produced during a scheduled ten-minute portrait session.

The person is still aware that a photographer is present, but no longer needs to perform for every frame.

For celebrities and other clients accustomed to constant public attention, discretion becomes equally important. A private photographer may witness conversations, locations and moments that were never intended for publication. Understanding that boundary is part of the job.

Trust, in this environment, becomes almost as important as technical ability.

Two completely different images of the same person

The contrast becomes particularly interesting during a film festival.

Imagine the same guest photographed twice on the same day.

In the evening, the world may see carefully selected photographs from a premiere: formal clothes, controlled lighting, sponsor walls, hundreds of cameras and a few minutes of concentrated public attention.

Several hours earlier, the same person might have been photographed drinking coffee beside a hotel window, stepping into a water taxi, laughing with friends or walking through a quiet part of Venice.

Neither version is necessarily more authentic than the other.

They simply document different realities.

The red carpet records the public moment. Private photography can record everything around it.

And Venice provides an extraordinary background for that second story because travelling through the city is itself visually interesting. Even moving between two appointments can involve walking through narrow streets, crossing bridges and travelling across open water.

There is very little neutral space.

The festival beyond the Lido

For travelers visiting Venice in late August and early September, this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of festival season.

One does not need an invitation to a premiere to notice that something is happening.

The historic centre continues its everyday life while, simultaneously, an international cultural event unfolds across the lagoon. The two worlds constantly intersect.

A visitor can spend the morning exploring churches and markets, encounter the increased activity around major hotels in the afternoon and later see boats carrying festival guests towards the Lido.

At the same time, Venice remains Venice.

Laundry still hangs above small streets. Residents still stop for coffee. Delivery boats continue their morning rounds. Away from a handful of particularly busy locations, it is possible to walk for several minutes and almost forget that one of the world's most important film festivals is taking place nearby.

This coexistence may be one reason the festival has retained such a distinctive character.

It does not build a temporary fantasy city around cinema.

It brings cinema into a city that already feels improbable.

Before the first premiere

In the weeks before the Venice International Film Festival begins, there is no single moment when the city officially changes.

The transformation happens gradually.

More international guests arrive. Hotel reservations become harder to find. Boats become busier. Photographers and production crews appear. The Lido prepares its venues. Conversations increasingly turn towards films, premieres and who might be arriving next.

Then, almost suddenly, the images begin appearing around the world.

For audiences watching from elsewhere, Venice may briefly become a sequence of red carpets, premieres and celebrities stepping from water taxis.

For those inside the city, however, the festival is considerably larger than those photographs suggest.

It exists in the journeys between appearances, in hotel corridors and restaurant tables, in conversations away from cameras and in the hours before someone steps onto a red carpet.

Some of those moments remain entirely private. Others are preserved by the small number of people invited close enough to witness them.

That is perhaps the most interesting relationship between Venice and photography during festival season.

The world sees the spectacle.

But between the premieres, behind the official images and beyond the crowds waiting at the Lido, thousands of smaller stories are unfolding throughout the city.

And long before the first film begins, Venice is already performing.