Nanni Moretti’s romantic drama It Will Happen Tonight drew a warm nine-minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday evening as the Italian director returned to show a new film there for the first time in 37 years.
Moretti last world premiered a film at Venice in 1989 with Palombella Rossa (Red Wood Pigeon), which played as a special event within the parallel Critics’ Week section.
The failure of Palombella Rossa, about a communist politician and water polo player, to make it into competition created a stir at the time amid suggestions the exclusion was politically motivated. He was at the festival in 2024 with a restored copy of Ecce Bombo.
It Will Happen Tonight is only his second Golden Lion contender after Sweet Dreams in 1981, which won the Special Jury Prize.
The new film is loosely adapted from the short story “Hungary Heart” by Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo, whose novel Three Floors Up Moretti also adapted to the big screen. Louis Garrel and Jasmine Trinca play a bookseller and actress with an obvious attraction who lives cross intermittently while they are involved with other partners.
Moretti has tended to show his films at Cannes where he has premiered nine films in the main competition, winning best director for Aprile in 1994 and the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room in 2004.
Talking at the film’s press conference in Venice earlier, Moretti said his absence from from the festival had not been a deliberate slight but rather down to the timing for the shoots of his films.
“I wasn’t snubbing the film festival, it’s simply because I usually shoot my films in the summer and they’re never ready for Venice but rather for Cannes. This time, I shot It Will Happen Tonight in the autumn, so I proposed it to [Alberto] Barbera and he said ok,” he explained.
The director, who suffered a heart attack in the spring of 2025, was in good form as he hit Venice. He was given a returning hero’s welcome across the day, with lengthy applause as he arrived at the press conference while the gala competition screening was sold out.
