Amy Sacco’s Bungalow 8: Venice Film Festival’s New Hot Spot

It’s 3 a.m. in Venice and a statuesque blonde is towering over a terrified-looking Italian, telling him to move from the table he’s at—which has Michael Fassbender’s name on it. The mystified Italian is from a very old Venetian family and is standing his ground, but she’s Amy Sacco and at Bungalow 8, she calls the shots. He finally gets up, admitting defeat. “She has more power,” he admits as he makes his way toward the bar. Talk about a clash of civilizations.

Sacco’s Bungalow 8, a pop-up at the Venice Film Festival now in its second year at Palazzina Grassi (a new Philippe Starck-designed luxury hotel next door to the Palazzo Grassi) has become the place to be after whatever other screenings, dinners, and parties have taken place earlier in the evening. Every night of the festival has seen a mob of tuxedoed and ball gown-clad celebrities leaping from their boats into the safe arms of the hangout’s canal-side doormen before being ushered past the dozens of stuffed leather animals that keep guard along the corridor into the club.

It’s a star-studded cast: Robin Wright, who partied there with her daughter Dylan; Bar Refaeli, who took over the decks on opening night; James Franco, licking his wounds after his film Sal sent the auditorium into a collective coma; Madonna, fine until she suddenly decides to move and you find yourself sandwiched between two of her body guards; Eli Roth, throwing some impressive dance moves; Natasha Poly, looking so beautiful she caused several neck-craning men to walk into pillars—they’ve all been enjoying the pop-up-in-a-palazzo experience in the last 72 hours. Not to mention every other actor, director, producer, and model in town who can get in.

Arrigo Cipriani better watch out—there’s a new prima donna in town.