And the winner is…
The eightieth version of the Venice Movie Pageant has come to a detailed, with this yr’s Competitors jury, led by American filmmaker Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Babylon), awarding the coveted Greatest Movie Golden Lion to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Issues.
ADVERTISEMENTThe movie succeeds final yr’s documentary All The Magnificence And The Bloodshed by Laura Poitras (a member of this yr’s jury), and was a agency favorite this yr on the Lido.
Scroll down for the total listing of winners.
We predicted that it was a two-way race between Poor Issues and Agneiszka Holland’s Inexperienced Border for the highest prize, and each obtained awarded main awards, with Holland’s beautiful movie taking dwelling the Particular Jury Prize.
Poor Issues was the very best rated characteristic of the Competitors with a median of 4,24 / 5, adopted carefully by Evil Does Not Exist (3,80 / 5) and Agnieszka Holland’s Inexperienced Border (3,76 / 5).
Lanthimos, thought of the main Greek Bizarre Wave exponent, directs an adaptation of Alasdair Grey’s 1992 cult novel, a “diabolical fuckfest of a puzzle” (as one character says referring to the journey that slips from his grasp) which makes use of the language of Gothic conventions – with clear parallels to ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – to speak concerning the position of women and men in society. The director’s typical mastery of tone is a pleasure to behold, as is Tony McNamara’s mordantly humorous screenplay. Thematically layered, raunchy, stylistically executed and above all enjoyable, it’s obtained all of it and seems like a nicely deserved win for Lanthimos. Learn our full evaluation.
The director’s earlier Venice premiere, The Favorite, managed to perform the uncommon job of getting two separate awards in 2018: the Grand Jury Prize and the Volpi Cup for Greatest Actress for Olivia Coleman. The movie went on to obtain 9 Oscar nominations, together with for Greatest Image and Greatest Director, and coming dwelling with the Greatest Actress Oscar for Coleman.
Contemplating the oldest worldwide movie competition has a confirmed monitor file for premiering future Oscar contenders, you possibly can anticipate Poor Issues to be an early frontrunner for subsequent yr’s Oscars – alongside Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon – which premiered earlier this yr on the Cannes Movie Pageant. You may as well guess that lead actress Emma Stone, who has by no means been higher than in her flip because the hilarious and evolving “fairly little retard”, will hoover up the efficiency awards within the coming months.
The runner-up prize went to Aku Wa Sonzai Shinai (Evil Does Not Exist) by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.
After this masterful 2021 double-tap of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and the Oscar-winning Drive My Automobile, the Japanese filmmaker stunned everybody with the announcement of his new movie, Evil Does Not Exist. It got here out of nowhere and went straight into Venice’s competitors choice. No complaints right here.
The movie follows a father and daughter who dwell in a small village near Tokyo. In the future, the village inhabitants change into conscious of a plan to construct a glamping web site, a challenge that may have a damaging influence on the native water provide and endanger the ecological steadiness.
It sounds simple however it’s something however. Enigmatic and allusive, Hamaguchi’s parable provides up no simple solutions and is a a lot more durable promote than his earlier movies. Nonetheless, Evil Does Not Exist is a gently haunting revenge movie of kinds that calls for to be rewatched – and deserves to be celebrated.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Particular Jury Prize went to Zielona Granica (Inexperienced Border) by Agnieszka Holland.
Many noticed the movie profitable the highest prize; nonetheless, the Particular Jury Prize is a vital recognition for an important viewing expertise.
“It was a battle however it was an obligation,” mentioned Holland when accepting the prize, referring to the challenges of filming this distinctive work.
Inexperienced Border was probably the most talked about movies of the competition. It tackles the migration disaster on the Poland-Belarus border over the previous two years, and is an incisive indictment of a unbroken EU disaster, in addition to a reminder that many are nonetheless dying on Europe’s borders.
The migrants from the Center East and Africa are caught up as pawns in a geopolitical standoff, and the movie seems critically on the manner Poland’s safety providers pushed again migrants who had been lured to the border by Belarus, an ally of Russia.
ADVERTISEMENTIt additionally asks important questions on collective accountability and inaction in a geopolitical panorama Europe – as a collective – finds itself in.
“We’re dedicating this prize to the activists,” concluded Holland on stage through the awards ceremony, in a transferring speech.
Written by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, Inexperienced Border is predicated on meticulous analysis, together with interviews with refugees, border guards and activists – an pressing and compassionate work, which has already drawn the ire of Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who labelled Inexperienced Border as “Third Reich propaganda.”
“Within the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda movies exhibiting Poles as bandits and murderers. Immediately, they’ve Agnieszka Holland for that,” wrote Ziobro on X (previously Twitter).
Holland famous that Ziobro, who serves as prosecutor common in addition to justice minster, commented on her movie with out having seen it and that she believed his phrases amounted to defamation, calling them “despicable.” She has demanded an apology from Ziobro and acknowledged she plans to convey defamation fees in opposition to in opposition to him. She additionally demanded that he make a charitable donation of fifty,000 Polish zlotys (approx. €10,800) to an affiliation that helps Holocaust survivors.
ADVERTISEMENTHolland mentioned the comparability to Nazi propaganda was offensive due to what Poland suffered beneath Nazi occupation throughout World Struggle II and given her personal background. She famous that she was each the daughter of a liaison within the Warsaw Rebellion, town’s 1944 revolt in opposition to the occupying Nazi German forces, and the granddaughter of Holocaust victims.
“In our nation, which skilled loss of life, cruelty and the struggling of tens of millions throughout World Struggle II, a comparability to the perpetrators of those occasions is extraordinarily painful and requires an acceptable response,” Holland mentioned.
Its topicality and governmental slamming apart, Holland’s movie can’t be diminished to its material, as it’s a brilliantly directed and acted black-and-white intestine punch, and one of many Polish filmmaker’s best possible in an already spectacular filmography (Indignant Harvest, Europa Europa, Spoor). Learn our full evaluation.
The Greatest Director Prize went, moderately surprisingly contemplating many anticipated both Bradley Cooper (Maestro) or Bertrand Bonello (La Bête) to win, to Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone for his movie Io Capitano. The movie tells the story of the journey of Seydou and Moussa, two younger males who go away Dakar to make their technique to Europe. It’s a up to date odyssey via the risks of the desert, the horrors of the detention centres in Libya and the perils of the ocean.
Like Inexperienced Border, it tackles the subject of immigration and the pursuit of the Europe dream – its promise and sombre actuality. Garrone’s movie provides a reverse shot in comparison with the photographs we’re used to seeing from a western perspective, and like Holland’s movie, offers a voice to the ordinarily unvoiced.
The movie proved to be a favorite amongst each Italian and worldwide press, with an general common of three,62 / 5, rating it the fourth finest reviewed movie of the Competitors.
The movie additionally noticed its major star Seydou Sarr win the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Greatest New Expertise.
On the performing entrance, Peter Sarsgaard gained the Volpi Cup for his note-perfect efficiency in Michel Franco’s Reminiscence. He performs Saul, a person affected by dementia, and his efficiency is the furthest factor from caricatural. Sarsgaard delivers a deeply transferring portrayal of a delicate man subjected to a illness that he has no management over.
The American actor referred to the “shared communal expertise that could be a sacred sacrament of society” in relation to cinema and namechecked the continued Hollywood strikes. Particularly, he referred to the specter of AI, stating that “an actor is an individual, a author is an individual” – and that we danger of expertise of the “sacred sacrament” being handed over to the “eight millionaires who personal (AI)”.
Each Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard are glorious in Reminiscence, which is stomach-knotting stuff – at instances gut-wrenching, but in addition surprisingly tender. The best way the movie offers the matters of sexual abuse, dementia, denial, and Festen -level household dynamics is nicely judged and makes for an extremely memorable addition to this yr’s Competitors.
Cailee Spaeny gained Greatest Actress for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which was the furthest factor from the toothless, estate-approved biopic it might have feasibly been. As an alternative, it was a delicate and absorbing adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir ‘Elvis and Me’, central to which is 25-year-old Spaeny’s uncaricatured flip because the main woman.
We thought she would win the Marcello Mastroianni Award for finest newcomer, however the jury determined to offer her the highest prize. You will have glimpsed Spaeny in Dangerous Occasions on the El Royale, because the younger Lynne Cheney in Vice, or in sequence like Devs or Mare of Easttown. Nonetheless, that is indubitably her massive break, exhibiting that she’s able to shouldering an enormous manufacturing and acing the project.
Full listing of winners:
- Golden Lion – Greatest Movie: Poor Issues (Yorgos Lanthimos)
- Grand Jury Prize: Aku Wa Sonzai Shinai (Evil Does Not Exist) (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
- Particular Jury Prize: Inexperienced Border (Agnieszka Holland)
- Silver Lion – Greatest Director: Matteo Garrone (Io Capitano)
- Volpi Cup for Greatest Actress: Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla)
- Volpi Cup for Greatest Actor: Peter Sarsgaard (Reminiscence)
- Greatest Screenplay: Guillermo Calderon and Pablo Larrain (El Conde)
- Marcello Mastroianni Award for Greatest New Expertise: Seydou Sarr (Io Capitano)
The Venice Movie Pageant happened from 30 August – 9 September. Click on right here for our full every day protection of this yr’s eightieth version and keep tuned to Euronews Tradition for our full debrief of the competition: the highs, the lows, the speaking factors and what to look out for on the large and smaller screens within the coming months.