Film festivals can be glamorous and exciting affairs.

And in terms of sun, sea and sheer star power, Venice is amongst the most dazzling of them all. But as pampered as the filmmakers may be, their experience is not without pressure. After all, the results of their labours are about to come under the harshest of spotlights. As Scottish producer Douglas Rae describes it, on the morning after his new film’s Venice premiere in early September, when the cinema lights go out, “your heart is in your mouth”.

Rae’s company Ecosse Films is the force behind Wuthering Heights, one of the most eagerly anticipated competition films on the Lido, the long, thin island home of the festival. It’s quite a heady prospect: a literary classic, directed by Andrea Arnold, whose breakthrough feature Red Road was set in Glasgow and who is regarded as one of the world’s most talented directors. (Indeed, by the end of the week, the film’s promise was realised as Wuthering Heights went on to win the festival’s coveted prize for Best Cinematography.)

Rae and his partner Robert Bernstein – whose films include their first, lauded Mrs Brown and the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy – had been developing a new adaptation of Emily Bronte’s gothic masterpiece for four years, with a few directors in mind, when Arnold got in touch and expressed her own passion for the book.

“Andrea’s the last person I would have expected to take on a classic novel like this,” says Rae, “because she makes her own films, with her own stories, about things that she’s passionate about. But it turned out she’s been thinking of making this movie for 25 years. So to get Andrea on board was extraordinary. From our point of view as a company, it was an amazing piece of alchemy – because if you’re going to be crazy enough to take on Wuthering Heights, you’ve got to do it with a director who says something very different. And Andrea has brought a truthfulness that’s been missing in previous versions, particularly by choosing young people as Heathcliffe and the younger Cathy who had not acted before.”

Rae has plenty of experience of this sort of occasion – whether attending the Oscars with Mrs Brown, where Judi Dench’s performance as Queen Victora was nominated, or walking down the red carpet with Sam Taylor Wood and Elton John when Nowhere Boy screened at Sundance. “But I’ve never been to Venice before,” he says. “This year is a particularly good time to come, because it’s such a strong year for British films. To be in the same company as Shame and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is quite awesome.”

Sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior, the festival’s opulent meeting place, the Edinburgh-born Rae seems to have a useful sense of perspective on the experience of presenting such a high profile movie. “Making this film was incredibly challenging, because we shot it in Yorkshire in October/November, with the mud, the rain, and lots and lots of wind,” he laughs. “So coming here, in the sunshine, with all this splendour, you just think about the incredibly privileged position you’re in.

“Of course the next step is to see what people think about the way you’ve told your story. And when you sit in the world premier of your movie, you have absolutely no idea how the audience will respond. When the premiere is at a festival like Venice, and there are 1,500 people in the auditorium, who include some of the world’s great filmmakers, that does make you quite anxious. You’ve spent years developing something, working with a director and 150 people on the production, then hundreds more on post-production, so you want it to work for those people, for the whole collaborative experience of making a movie.”

Thankfully, the response could not have been better. “During the film you could hear a pin drop – and that silence spoke volumes to me,” he says, proudly. “As the lights went up, the audience gave us a standing ovation for about eight minutes. To feel that response and to see the audiences’ faces made all that effort worthwhile.”

Away from Venice, Ecosse has 30 projects in some stage of development, including 10 in its new Glasgow office, where Rae is keen to develop Scottish talent. The company’s next film in front of the camera will be a teenage werewolf movie, Love Bites, which is about to start shooting in Scotland.

When I ask if he feels he’s waving the flag for Scotland here in Venice, he grins and puts his hand in his pocket. “Let me show you my lucky badge, which I take to all our screenings.” He drops a tiny, worn metal badge into the Venetian sunlight, plain but for three words: “Made in Scotland”.

Wuthering Heights opens in UK cinemas on November 11