The Cinema Biennale: How Cartier Builds its Aesthetic Ideal

On the Lungomare Marconi, at the height of summer, the ritual is immutable: meticulously, the immense red carpet bordering the Palazzo del Cinema and leading to the Sala Grande is rolled out, just a few steps from bathers who lounge in the sun, delighted to watch the preparations. A photographers’ podium, giant screens, flags, XXL billboards—everything is in place. The Venice Film Festival, with its well-oiled programming and ceremonies, can then begin.

The grand avenue of the Lido di Venezia transforms into the nerve center of the seventh art. Stars, fans, sponsors, journalists, producers, and emerging talents converge for fifteen days of frenzy and emotion that take over Venice each night. La Serenissima invites everyone to vibrate with each screening. As the world’s oldest film festival, the Venice Film Festival refuses to be reduced to just a list of awards. It wants to “show,” inspire, spark reflection, suggest aesthetics and perspectives, and reveal talent. The city of the winged lion thus becomes another city of angels, where successes and rumors are made and unmade. Each year, the festival strengthens its reputation as the one most capable of catapulting films to Oscar-favorite status.

Another animal, another legend: across from the Gritti Palace, a giant feline has taken over the scene. Cartier’s panther looms large across the façade of the Punta della Dogana, right beside the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. During the two weeks of the festival, Cartier is its official partner. For the past five years, the house has been weaving bridges between its cultural territories, aesthetic languages, style icons, and those of the Venice Film Festival.

For Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, this bond exists above all on an emotional level: “Cinema deals with social, political, and existential themes. But it is a universal language, accessible to all, one that expresses emotions in an immediate way.”

Each year, Cartier expands its initiatives: sometimes celebrating Venice’s heritage, such as restoring the Teatro Verde on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore; other times highlighting cultural festivities like the Ciao Casanova musical or architecture, with this year’s exhibition The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Jean Nouvel at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. On this, Arnaud Carrez comments: “Last year, we supported the exhibition dedicated to Jean Cocteau at the Guggenheim. This year, it’s the Fondation Cini show, which foreshadows the new site for the Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art. None of this is by chance—it’s a progressive strategy.”

But Cartier’s narrative at Venice is first and foremost about cinema. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award, created in 2006 by the Biennale and awarded in partnership with Cartier since 2021, went this year to the great filmmaker Julian Schnabel. According to Carrez: “The Venice Film Festival is not just a festival—it’s part of the Biennale. It is a platform of openness, innovation, and creativity. That’s why it resonates so deeply with our commitments. Venice embodies our values: creativity, excellence. It is a city of openness, its beauty unmatched.

In the brand’s calendar of strategic communications, the Venice Film Festival holds an important place, according to senior executives present at the event. Although budgets are not disclosed, the scope of Cartier’s involvement varies in intensity from year to year. When the festival coincides with the Homo Faber international biennial exhibition dedicated to exceptional craftsmanship, the event takes on a broader dimension for Cartier, which does not hesitate to invite clients from around the world to experience both the glamour of the festival and the house’s artistic creations. Even so, Arnaud Carrez is careful to add nuance: “This is not just a matter of communication; it is an artistic and cultural approach consistent with who we are. Cartier has always demonstrated generosity, not merely in terms of support, but by contributing to projects that carry real meaning. The Venice Film Festival showcases filmmakers from diverse backgrounds. We, too, embody that same freedom of creation.”

Another highlight of the festival: the 2025 Masterclasses, entitled The Art and Craft of Cinema, were all sponsored by Cartier. These encounters allow cinema professionals—whether in front of or behind the camera, directors or artisans—to share their craft. Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s Director of Image, Style, and Heritage, stresses: “Collective creation is what brings us close to cinema. Behind a film or behind a jewel, there are craftspeople, talents working together. It is a collective work. Emotion only exists when the audience in a cinema—or the person wearing or seeing someone wear a jewel—feels that authenticity.”

On why Cartier supports cinema, Rainero continues: “Above all, it’s about creating artistic emotion. Cinema offers it in abundance, but jewelry too provokes emotion—through its shape, its design, its stones. It speaks to our relationship with permanence, in contrast with the impermanence of human life. Just like cinema, which tells stories rooted in an era but touches us universally and endures. This ability to carry meaning is what makes jewelry so rich. And in this sense, cinema is the ultimate vector of meaning.”

Cartier’s aesthetics, however, are not limited to festival sponsorships—a relationship that began back in the 1990s when Cartier partnered with the Deauville American Film Festival until the early 2010s. They also extend to the screen itself, through appearances in numerous films. This began as early as 1926, with actor Rudolph Valentino wearing a Cartier Tank watch in The Son of the Sheik. Or in Jean Cocteau’s 1946 Beauty and the Beast, where actress Josette Day weeps real pear-shaped Cartier diamonds. As Cocteau remarked: “A fake diamond does not shine, said Cocteau, only a real one sparkles.”

More recently, in Wes Anderson’s 2025 film The Phoenician Scheme, Cartier played a starring role with a rosary-style necklace specially commissioned by the director. Set with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, the precious piece was inspired by a cross pendant created by Cartier in the 1880s.

This is where Cartier successfully weaves its aesthetics into the collective imagination. Rainero explains: “It is a celebration of creativity. In Venice, cinema is at the center. Our creations fit naturally into this stage, but the partnership goes far beyond the product. Our creations on screen also participate in that celebration of creation. Wes Anderson, for example, came to see me in Paris with his script. He needed several very precise objects and asked if we could help. For him, nothing is a mere prop—every object has meaning. We discussed it. Some already existed in our archives. Ultimately, we agreed on a cross necklace, which we reworked. We found a true shared space of expression.” He concludes: “Cinema allows us to reflect on how our jewels fit into people’s lives.”