Cartier will be the main sponsor of the Venice Film Festival

Starting this year, Cartier will be the main sponsor of the Venice Biennale for the Venice International Film Festival, helping to support contemporary film production. Through this collaboration, from this year onwards the Venice International Film Festival and Cartier have established a new award dedicated to directors, the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, which will be awarded to the major cultural innovators in the world of cinema. The first director to be awarded will be Ridley Scott, who this year will present The Last Duel in Venice and present the highly anticipated House of Gucci in November. Although the financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed, as the New York Times reports deals of this kind can generate millions in terms of sponsorship. According to Roberto Cicutto, president of the Biennale, the partnership with Cartier is very positive, as it owns «the ability to best interpret a collaboration with a cultural institution».

Cartier's participation in the Venetian festival undoubtedly signals a new step in the brand's commitment to the world of culture and art: in addition to the Deauville film festival, among its recent efforts there was the first Parisian exhibition dedicated to the works Cherry Blossoms by Damien Hirst and the next immersive installation by Sarah Sze, also in Paris,  but also the one in Milan, Les Citoyens, established at the Triennale during the summer. Cartier and his eponymous Fondation had gained visibility and success in 2020 by curating a series of digital artistic events such as the group show Trees and the compilation of natural sounds The Great Animal Orchestra. Culture has always been Cartier's hidden soft power – a prerogative that Tiffany & Co. has now put under attack, within a few months, creating a campaign with Beyoncé, Jay-Z and a Basquiat painting; welcoming as an ambassador the young star of independent cinema Anya Taylor-Joy and bringing back the archive collections of Jean Schlumberger.

In a market increasingly crowded with new and old brands as well as new and old designers, the big brands of luxury and, in this case, jewelry must affirm their authority and relevance precisely through cultural initiatives of this kind - and they are basically the only ones to have the networks and resources to do so. The weapons with which the battle for the conquest of the market will be fought are precisely the ambassadors and the ability to establish their own cultural predominance even if, as happened with the recent campaign of Tiffany & Co., some voices within the creative world have criticized the commodification of Basquiat's art and, more generally, of cultural production in a broader sense.