The 29th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 25 August to 7 September 1968.
Five days before the festival was to be held, directors of the Italian filmmakers association ANAC, for both political and cultural reasons, withdrew their films from the competition.
Some directors, however, defected from this decision and Roberto Rossellini, Liliana Cavani, Bernardo Bertolucci and Nelo Risi decided to project their films.
Pier Paolo Pasolini initially refused to participate at the festival, but finally his film entered in Competition.
Finally the competition started on the evening of 27 August, while demonstrations against "the fascist and bourgeois exhibition" were taking place outside the Palazzo.