Saverio Costanzo, the Italian director of the New York City-set low-budget drama Hungry Hearts that will compete for the top prize at the Venice Film Festival opening today, sees the exposure his film will get as a godsend.

“For a movie like this a festival is crucial,” Costanzo, who said he made the movie for under €1 million, said.

“We need the festival to make a buzz so people know about the film and Venice is a festival that is full of passion.”

That is a welcome endorsement for the Venice Film Festival’s 71st edition, which opens with the much-anticipated world premiere of Birdman by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Michael Keaton as a former superhero trying to make a comeback.

Although it is the world’s oldest film festival and perhaps its most glamorous, with stars chauffeured to the red carpet on Lido Island by motorboat water taxis instead of limousines, it struggles, a bit like the city, to keep its head above water.

In the last few years, it’s lost a bit of its purpose because the independent and arthouse film industry has been hard hit

“For the longest time it lived off its reputation for being one of the oldest, one of the most prestigious, one of the most gorgeous places in Europe but, in the last few years, it’s lost a bit of its purpose because the independent and arthouse film industry has been hard hit,” said Scott Roxborough, German bureau chief for The Hollywood Reporter trade publication.

The festival’s director, Alberto Barbera, who was brought back in 2012 after an eight-year hiatus, has introduced a host of innovations to keep Venice relevant at a time when the Tribeca Festival in New York in April steals some of its artistic thunder and the Toronto Film Festival that begins next week has become a global cinematic mega mall.

Toronto shows hundreds of films while Venice screens 55, 20 of those competing for the top Golden Lion award.

On the artistic front, the Venice Days forum, run independently but parallel to the main line-up, this year has 14 films competing for the first time for a €20,000 prize.

Alba Rohrwacher in Saverio Costanzo’slow-budget drama Hungry Hearts.

“We are not looking for middle-of-the-road cinema. We look for film-makers that have made a film that breaks away from their traditional style,” its director, Giorgio Gosetti, said.

Gosetti says Venice Days lets directors meet, spend time and dine together at its special ‘villa’ – which he sees, without naming it, as a world away from the likes of Toronto.

“Film festivals today are factories or supermarkets, where everyone goes to buy the products, speaks to nobody and then goes to the checkout and pays,” he said. But festivals increasingly need a ‘checkout counter’ where the movers and shakers in the cinema world can make deals, and Barbera gets much credit for having launched a long overdue Venice Film Market, now in its third year.

The market last year recorded a 25 per cent increase in the number of distributors, producers and sales agents attending as well as films presented over its first year.

The aim clearly is to boost Venice’s profile as a place to do business, but John Hopewell, a reporter for trade publication Variety, said the festival still has a long way to go.

“The number of industry participants at Venice according to the festival itself is 1,400 and that’s not much more than Locarno which is around 1,070 or San Sebastian which is about 1,000,” Hopewell said, naming two other big European festivals.

“You would expect the industry presence in Venice to be significantly higher but I think the Venice Film Market is a step in the right direction.”