Jury president Cate Blanchett poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Jury president Cate Blanchett poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Jury member Matt Dillon poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Jury member Matt Dillon poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Members of the jury, Nicola Lagioia from left, Joanna Hogg, Veronika Franz, Cate Blanchett, Matt Dillon, Ludivine Sagnier and Christian Petzold pose for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Jury president Cate Blanchett poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Members of the jury Veronika Franz, left, and Cate Blanchett pose for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Members of the jury, Nicola Lagioia from left, Joanna Hogg, Veronika Franz, Cate Blanchett, Matt Dillon, Ludivine Sagnier and Christian Petzold pose for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Jury president Cate Blanchett poses for photographers at the jury photo call during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020.

Alberto Barbera director of the Venice Film Festival poses during a photo call of the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival at the Venice Lido, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020. The Venice Film Festival will go from Sept. 2 through Sept. 12. Italy was among the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and the festival will serve as a celebration of its re-opening and a sign that the film world, largely on pause since March, is coming back as well.

VENICE (AP) — Australian actress Cate Blanchett said Wednesday she is baffled that other countries didn’t learn from Italy’s pain to be better prepared to fight the coronavirus outbreak when it spread.

Blanchett, who is heading the jury at the virus-restricted Venice Film Festival, arrived on the Lido wearing a surgical mask and skipped the typical water taxi photo op that stars have long used.

Both were evidence of the safety and social distancing norms that have added a certain degree of sobriety to the usually glamorous festival, the first international in-person film showcase after COVID-19 shut down the film industry in March.

At an opening-day press conference, Blanchett was asked whether she feared coming to Italy, the first country in the West to be slammed by COVID-19. Hospitals, cemeteries and morgues were overflowing in nearby Lombardy, which became the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe.

Blanchett said she had many fears, but also said “we have to be courageous.”

“Every time one starts a project, whether it’s in a pandemic or not, it always feels like the first day of school,” she said.

But Blanchett, a U.N. goodwill ambassador who has previously criticized the U.S. decision to pull out of the World Health Organization, also said she couldn’t understand why the U.N. agency wasn’t being allowed to have a greater leadership role in the ongoing crisis.

“I think we’re a very strange species that we don’t learn by the painful examples, for example, of the terrible stress that Italy was under,” to have been better prepared when the virus spread elsewhere, she said. “We often behave in quite obtuse and fragmented and destructive ways, which is not particularly helpful.”