If this year’s Hollywood-heavy line-up has left you wondering whether the Venice film festival is getting too commercial, you need not worry. There is still plenty of room for art-house stuff on the Lido.

Take “Death in the Land of Encantos” for example, a documentary film by Filipino director Lav Diaz featuring outside the main competition, in the “Horizons” section.

It runs for 540 minutes — 9 hours — and will screen, without breaks, on Saturday 8. “It’s the longest film in the festival. We’ll hand out emergency supplies to those that resist
until the very end,” joked Marco Mueller, the director of the Mostra del Cinema.

The length of the film, described by Filipino media as a largely improvised epic shot in black and white, is no record for Diaz. His “Evolution of a Filipino Family” (2004) was 630 minutes long.

And it’s not a record length for a film festival either. This year in Cannes there was a film more than 14 hours long, divided in four parts to make it more palatable — and to allow for a couple of toilet breaks.