For three decades, a humble chipboard board beside the Palazzo del Cinema has served as the Venice Film Festival’s most honest critic — and its most savage. The Ridateci i soldi (“Give us our money back”) wall invites ordinary attendees to vent their frustrations in the most withering terms imaginable, with the full blessing of festival organisers. This year’s entries ranged from complaints about overpriced water taxis to brutal takedowns of films on the lineup, including a plea to Danny Boyle to “make another movie about drugs.”
A Three-Decade Tradition of Brutal Honesty
In an industry where festivals risk becoming little more than elaborate publicity machines — where every middling film is hailed as a classic and every lukewarm performance treated as a masterclass — the Ridateci i soldi wall stands as a vital corrective. Erected in the late 1990s by Gianni Ippoliti, a former football referee and television presenter, the installation was conceived as a direct protest against reviews that had grown unreasonably enthusiastic.
Ippoliti, who acts as the prize’s sole judge, remains deeply sceptical of the festival’s own critical apparatus. “If you read the reviews, you would believe that all 150 films shown at the festival this year are masterpieces,” he said this week, standing guard over what has become known as the festival’s wall of shame. “That’s not possible.”
The tradition has grown into one of the most distinctive features of the Venice Film Festival. Each year, the festival’s director, Alberto Barbera, personally presents a prize to the most acerbic submission. The award — the Coppa Codacons, a wooden sculpture sponsored by Italy’s consumer watchdog and carved by artist Ferdinando Codognotto — is perhaps a more coveted keepsake than the Golden Lion itself, at least among those who appreciate a well-aimed put-down.
This Year’s Most Memorable Takedowns
The wall on the Lido offered a rich crop of grievances this season. Practical complaints featured prominently: rising costs for entry badges, water taxis and local accommodation (“Maybe by 2030 we’ll have to pay for the oxygen we breathe”), interminable queue lengths, uncomfortable seating, and ceiling lights left blazing in the screening rooms.
But it was the cinematic takedowns that truly delighted. The epic Russian biopic DAU — already notorious for behind-the-scenes reports of coercion and humiliation inflicted on cast and crew — was labelled “a disgusting, abusive (!!), pointless film!! Look it up!!!”. Paul Schrader’s child abuse drama The Basics of Philosophy attracted insinuations so scathing they cannot be repeated in print for fear of legal consequences. Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, meanwhile, became the latest vehicle for spoonerism-based wordplay on its title.
Italian entries in the lineup bore the brunt of particularly fierce criticism. Andrea Pallaoro’s romantic drama The Echo Chamber, written by the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci, was dismissed with the prediction that “he will be turning in his grave.” Luca Guadagnino’s seven-hour documentary Joie de Vivre prompted a simple but emphatic verdict: “Arrest him!” The Gerda Taro biopic The Girl with the Leica was declared “Insípido!” — bland in the extreme.
“Italian audiences always interact a little more with films,” says John Bleasdale, an Italy-based British critic and novelist. Just as popular actors or directors are applauded the moment their names appear in the credits, boos are regarded as a legitimate expression of taste, he argues. “The boos are vociferous, as is ironic laughter and applause. Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin got booed at Venice, while other films split an audience and half of them boo while the others cheer.”
The Winner: A Critic Who Still Loves Festivals
Cristian Poletti took home this year’s Coppa Codacons for a review suggesting The Echo Chamber might more accurately have been titled “The Echo Bathroom,” given the number of scenes featuring characters bathing. The note went on to reason that if Bertolucci had indeed written the script, perhaps the film was always intended as a shampoo advertisement.
Poletti may have won the prize for the meanest review, but he insists he remains a passionate supporter of the festival circuit. “I’ve been coming to Venice since 2015, and I always see 30 to 40 films,” he said. “Even watching a bad movie is better than not watching a movie at all.”
His enthusiasm is perhaps more significant than he realises. In recent years, there have been growing signs that Hollywood’s major studios are pulling back from the festival circuit, mindful that social-media campaigns can serve as more effective hype machines — and that a public spanking at Venice or Cannes can establish precisely the wrong kind of irrefutable fact.
The wall, then, serves a purpose that extends well beyond entertainment. It is an institutionalised counterweight to the pressures of prestige, a reminder that not every film premiere needs to end in rapture.
Why it Matters
As the film industry grapples with the tension between artistic credibility and commercial reality, Venice’s wall of shame offers something rare: a space where audiences are empowered to reject the consensus. In an era of curated online reviews and carefully managed publicity tours, the Ridateci i soldi tradition stands as one of the last truly democratic forums for film criticism — crude, unfair, occasionally hilarious, and utterly essential.
