The 66th annual Venice Film Festival held in Venice, Italy, was opened on September 2, 2009 by Baarìa - La porta del vento. International competition jury, led by Ang Lee, awarded Leone d'Oro to Lebanon. The festival was closed on September 12, 2009, with Maria Grazia Cucinotta serving as the festival's hostess.

The following 25 films competed for the Leone d'oro.

The following films were shown out of competition:

The Venice International Film Festival (Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia) is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido, Venice, Italy. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi and in other venues nearby. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale (Italian Biennale di Venezia), for over a century one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world (founded in 1895). It is known world-wide for the International Film Festival, the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition, and continues the great tradition of the Festival of Contemporary Music, the Theatre Festival, now flanked by the Festival of Contemporary Dance.

Venice (Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] ( listen), Venetian: Venexia [veˈnɛsja]; (Latin: Venetia) is a city in northeast Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. The city in its entirety is listed as World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon.

Venice is the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland), mostly in the large frazioni of Mestre and Marghera; 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) (population 1,600,000).

This is a list of major film festivals, sorted by continent.

Eko International Film Festival||2010||Lagos||Template:Nigeria||International||The purpose of Eko International Film Festival is to organize an annual Independent film festival for the promotion of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for he sustainable development of the Nigerian film industry locally and internationally by the promotion of cooperation and support between local and foreign filmmakers, professionals and other stakeholders to use the motion picture arts and sciences for mass communication for the promotion of commerce and industry for the benefit of Lagos state and the rest of the world.

A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. Increasingly film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings. The films may be of recent date and, depending upon the focus of the individual festival, can include international releases as well as films produced by the organisers' domestic film industry. Sometimes there is a focus on a specific film-maker or genre (e.g., film noir) or subject matter (e.g., horror film festivals). A number of film festivals specialise in short films, each with its defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events.

The first major film festival was held in Venice in 1932; the other major and oldest film festivals of the world are: Cannes Film Festival (1939), Festival del film Locarno (1946), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1946), Edinburgh International Film Festival (1947), Melbourne International Film Festival (1951), Berlin International Film Festival (1951) and Toronto International Film Festival (1976).