US filmmaker Woody Allen back on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival to promote his first film in years, has called out “silly” cancel culture, and said that “nothing terrible” had ever happened to him.

Allen, 87, whose popularity soured after accusations of sexual abuse were made against him by his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow in the 1990s, attracted a small band of bare-breasted protesters around the island city criticising his presence (and that of filmmakers Roman Polanski and Luc Besson) at this year’s 80th film festival.

Allen has not had a film released in the US since 2017; his memoir was cancelled by a major publisher and he has struggled to get his films financed, falling out of the “US marketplace entirely”.

His romantic thriller set in Paris, Coup de Chance, marks his 50th feature film, and, with a stroke of luck it might just be his entree back into mainstream cinema circles.

Sitting down with Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy at the Excelsior Hotel before the Lido screening, Allen, who maintains his innocence, was asked about cancel culture and the #MeToo movement.

Allen on being ‘cancelled’

“I said years ago that I should have been a poster boy [for the #MeToo movement] and they got all excited about that,” he replied.

“I’ve made 50 films. I’ve always had very good parts for women, always had women in the crew, always paid them the exact same amount that we paid men, worked with hundreds of actresses, and never, ever had a single complaint from any of them at any point.

“Not a single one ever said, ‘Working with him, he was mean or he was harassing’. That’s just not been an issue.”

“Do you feel you’ve been ‘cancelled?” Keslassy asked.

“I feel if you’re going to be cancelled, this is the culture to be cancelled by. I just find that all so silly. I don’t think about it. I don’t know what it means to be cancelled. I know that over the years everything has been the same for me. I make my movies. What has changed is the presentation of the films.

“You know, I work and it’s the same routine for me. I write the script, raise the money, make the film, shoot it, edit it, it comes out. The difference is not from cancel culture. The difference is the way they present the films. It’s that, that’s the big change.”

On September 4, Allen was in good spirits as he walked the red carpet with his wife of 26 years, Soon-Yi Previn and their two adult daughters, Bechet and Manzie Tio, and posed for photos.

His film received a five-minute standing ovation (if it’s greater than nine minutes, it means the crowd loves it), and also received a medium-to-warm reception at a Q&A press call.

Activists outside

As the French film industry activist group Tapis Rouge, Colere Noire (translation: Red Carpet, Black Anger) continued their march outside, there were no direct questions about the scandals that have plagued his private life for years, according to Screen Daily.

Instead, Allen discussed the role of chance in his life: ”I’ve been very lucky my whole life; I had two loving parents, I have good friends, I have a wonderful life and marriage. Two children.”

“In a few months I’ll be 88 years old. I’ve never been in a hospital or had anything terrible happen to me”.

When asked by Variety, though, about the allegations raised by his ex-partner Mia Farrow (whose adopted daughter Soon-Yi with Andre Previn later became Allen’s wife), his “mood” reportedly turned gloomy.

Dylan Farrow had participated in the 2021 docuseries, Allen v. Farrow, in which she spoke about allegations he sexually abused her.

“My reaction has always been the same. The situation has been investigated by two people, two major bodies, not people, but two major investigative bodies,” replied Allen.

“And both, after long detailed investigations, concluded there was no merit to these charges, that, you know, is exactly as I wrote in my book Apropos of Nothing. There was nothing to it.

“The fact that it lingers on always makes me think that maybe people like the idea that it lingers on. You know, maybe there’s something appealing to people. But why? Why? I don’t know what you can do besides having it investigated, which they did so meticulously.

“One was less than a year and the other one was many months. And they spoke to everybody concerned and, you know, both came to the exact same conclusion.”

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Oscar competition for Barbie and Oppenheimer

Meanwhile, two films that secured interim agreements with actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, Ferrari and Sofia Coppola’s biopic, Priscilla, were both promoted on the red carpet, and in screenings, by lead casts.

Adam Driver, who portrays one year of the famous Italian racing driver Enzo Ferrari’s life in 1957, addressed head on the US writers and actors strikes which have been going for months and are grinding the industry to a halt.

He’s in Venice, and proud to be there.

“I’m proud to be here as a visual representation of a movie not part of the AMPTP … why is it a smaller distribution company can meet the demands but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t.”

Ferrari received a six-minute standing ovation, and Driver was emotional amid the applause.

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Priscilla Presley also turned up for her film, which received a seven-minute standing ovation and is described by Vanity Fair as not an artist biopic, with “barely any moments of Elvis” on stage.

Priscilla was 14 when she entered Elvis’ world, and, unlike Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, this film “stays close to Priscilla, depicting her isolation as she enters life as a kept woman [a kept teenager, at first] at Graceland”.

“Perhaps this is a telling picture of how it was for too many women of that era [and other eras]: Passed from father to husband, forever negotiating her place in the realms of men,” wrote VF in an extended review.

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Major awards buzz

For a complete change of pace, Emma Stone stars alongside Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo – none in attendance on Friday due to the strikes – in sci-fi Frankenstein-esque meets Barbie comedy thriller, Poor Things.

The Hollywood Reporter described a raucous crowd jumping to their feet after the Friday night premiere at Venice with a 10-minute standing ovation.

“There is already major awards buzz for [director] Yorgos Lanthimos – who wowed at the Venice Film Festival five years ago with The Favourite – not least for Stone, who gives a fearless and hilarious performance as Bella Baxter, a young woman who attempts suicide only to be reanimated, Frankenstein-like, by a clearly unhinged surgeon and scientist, played by Dafoe,” it wrote.

Also worth flagging were Richard Linklater’s Hit Man starring Top Gun: Maverick co-star Glen Powell – which apparently blew the roof off at the press screening – and Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro.

For the record, it received a seven-minute standing ovation.