Standing Ovations Are Getting Out Of Hand At Film Festivals

The Venice Film Festival is in full swing. It’s the time of year when red carpets are flooded with Hollywood royalty, rising indie darlings, and global cinematic powerhouses. It’s where careers are made, Oscar campaigns are born, and some of the best films of the year get their first applause, sometimes a lot of it.

From 2-minute claps to 13-minute marathons, and latest even 15 1/2-minute standing ovation for The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne Johnson and for The Testament of Ann Lee starring Amanda Seyfried at this year's Venice Film Festival, so did Jacob Elordi starrer Frankenstein did this ritual has become one of Venice’s quirkiest and most talked-about traditions over the years.

It’s supposed to be a sign of critical enthusiasm, a collective release of awe and admiration. Many of these films, to be clear, do deserve that love.

This isn't one off though. It is a well-known observation that applause in Hollywood is largely oversized and dragged. Bizarrely, Sentimental Value for instance, was applauded for 19 minutes which feels like the length of the ovation has become more theatrical than authentic and less about emotional impact and more about optics. This of course, has little to do with the work presented on the screen.

A section of the audience on the internet has found itself questioning -even arguing- that these ovations are "ridiculous" and many wondering why a lot of the films that receive these ovations get bad reviews and less love from the audience post theatrical releases? The fact that these moments are deliberately timed has also been brought into question.

So it's a fair ask: are we applauding the film or the performance of applause itself? Also, just a reminder that in those 15 minutes most of us walk out of a quick shower, do a short meditation session, make scrambled eggs and toast, even vacuum your room.

There was a time when ovations meant something. Charlie Chaplin’s 12-minute standing ovation at the 1972 Oscars wasn’t about screen time or PR strategy, it came from a place of genuine appreciation, was about legacy, exile, and emotional reckoning. Today, the same length of ovation is delivered after films that haven’t even hit Rotten Tomatoes yet.

It’s as if every minute clapped becomes a metric of artistic value, an unspoken Palme d’Ovation, a prestige ranking where more is equated to the film being better.

But the uncomfortable truth? The ovation arms race comes across less like spontaneous adoration and more like a publicity algorithm that talent milks, media amplifies and publicists package. The applause marathon is often more engineered than earned. Camera operators pan to each cast member like it’s a royal wedding.

Some directors even reshuffle actors into fresh pairings. Some delay speeches just to keep the claps coming. In this absurdity, it is natural as audiences watching this unravel to feel like everyone is in on the act and the act is applause.

How the Standing Ovation Actually Works

A simple way to explain this is: after a film ends at Cannes or Venice, the cameras don’t cut away. Instead, they stay trained on the cast and director, broadcasting their reactions live onto the massive screen inside the theater.

This creates a subtle, unspoken pressure: if the audience stops clapping, the camera stops rolling. If you keep clapping, the emotional moment stretches on—and so does your exposure. Often, actors reshuffle into different configurations just to create new emotional beats and keep the energy going.

And because larger ensemble casts take longer to cycle through on camera, those films often receive the longest ovations—regardless of how the film was received critically.

Sometimes, the director steps in to end the ovation. Christopher McQuarrie, for instance, at the Cannes premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, cut the clapping short by grabbing a mic and leading the cast offstage. Had he not intervened, it could have gone on much longer.

What's more surprising is that there’s no standard for how the length is measured! Some outlets start the clock after the credits. Some include the director’s speech. Others count applause that begins during the end credits—even if the crowd isn’t standing yet. This explains why one film can reportedly receive both a “five-minute” and a “seven-and-a-half minute” ovation, depending on the outlet.

So, is a 15-minute standing ovation a mark of cinematic brilliance or just another act in the festival’s carefully staged drama?

Maybe a bit of both.

But in an industry where optics often outrun objectivity, the louder the applause, the better the headline. Just don’t confuse the clapping for a critical consensus—because in the end, it’s not always the film that’s being celebrated. By all means, clap. Stand. Celebrate. Film festivals are meant to be emotional. But let’s not confuse volume with value, or duration with depth.

Sometimes, it’s just the moment. And sometimes, that moment is the point.