This year's Venice Film Festival, which concludes Saturday night with its awards ceremony, attracted a formidable line-up of world premières and a stellar guest list, but it also had its problems, writes Michael Dwyer.

Last weekend, French temporary entertainment industry workers briefly disrupted a press conference held for Guido Chiesa's competition entry, Lavorare con Lentezza. Then hundreds of anti-globalisation activists, dressed as mutants on a giant inflatable oil rig, paraded down the Lido to the Palazzo del Cinema, just as guests were arriving for Michael Radford's film of The Merchant of Venice, which stars Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. The activists jumped onto the red carpet catwalk in front of the Palazzo.

What really infuriated festivalgoers, however, was a computer glitch that resulted in the Radford film being overbooked, and 200 people, who had paid up to €30 each for a ticket, were turned away. The screening started almost two hours late, causing a similar delay for the post-screening dinner for 500 guests, and for the midnight screening of Finding Neverland, starring Johnny Depp, which started at 2.15 a.m. and finished at 4. All of which makes me glad I opted instead for the Toronto Film Festival, which opened last night.