This year’s Venice Film Festival is the most star-studded in recent memory. The list of A-listers heading to the Lido’s red carpet — Brad Pitt and George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Jenna Ortega, Daniel Craig, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga — boggles the mind.

But the international film journalists attending this year’s festival are complaining they are being shut out of this celebrity feast, with studios and PR agents blocking access to stars for press interviews. Few of the top VIPs in Venice this year are doing international press interviews or taking part in “junkets” where the cast of a movie does sit-down interviews with journalists from international outlets. Pitt, Jolie, Clooney, and many more will only be doing the official festival press conference and nothing else. Tim Burton and the cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice walked the Venice red carpet for the world premiere of the Warner Bros. feature on Wednesday, but the studio junket was held in London on Thursday.

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Veteran film publicist Charles McDonald says studios and production companies have been moving away from international film festival interviews and junkets for some time now, but that the trend is picking up pace. He sees the move as a change in strategy from studios and distributors.

“For certain films, which might not have worldwide distribution in place yet, or not have a marketing plan, [the festivals] are being seen more as a place to test the water a little bit here before [studios] actually embark on a marketing strategy, with press interviews, etc.,” says McDonald. “And actors are increasingly less willing to do lots of interviews.”

But McDonald warns the policy risks doing real damage to the film festival ecosystem. “My feeling is, without the media, the festivals don’t really exist,” he says. “When a studio or whoever comes to Venice, to Berlin, to Cannes, the media coverage they get is absolutely necessary and essential to launching their films. And if the journalists can’t get access to those one to two big-name interviewees, their outlets won’t be able to afford to send them anymore.”