Amid a busy fall festival season, all eyes are back on the Lido Saturday night as we eagerly await the winners from the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
The honors are being handed out by the international jury, headed up by U.S. filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, as stars are dressed to the nines one last time for this year’s final, glitzy Lido red carpet event.
Danish star of May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown Mathilde Arcel has picked up the prestigious Volpi Cup for best actress. In the film, backdropped by World War II, she plays Marie, a young nanny and housemaid about to marry her wealthy, older, and widowed employer. But Marie guards a shameful secret that threatens to unravel the life she’s built.
The big winner from the Horizons (Orizzonti) section is Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s Diane in the Loop, a Belgian feature about a woman who sets out avenging her mother when she finds out she was raped three years before Diane’s birth.
Also in the Horizons section, Riccardo Scamarcio won best actor for Children of the Monkey, Laleh Marzban became emotional upon receiving the best actress prize for Falling House, and Jacqueline Lentzou nabbed best director for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, a film inspired by the real-life killing of a teenager by police in Athens in 2008.
Among the frontrunners for the Golden Lion is NAZA, a documentary from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and a late addition to the Venice lineup, which features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. The film’s title, NAZA, comes from an acronym the Israeli military uses as a shorthand for civilian casualties. The film’s Venice premiere was a sensation, with the gala audience giving it a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation.
Another favorite going into the awards is Possible Love from acclaimed Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong (Burning). The social drama, about a struggling working class family and the well-to-do documentarian who picks them as a subject for her new film, received some of the best reviews out of Venice, with most, like The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney, singling out the film’s “superlative ensemble” including veteran Korean actors Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine), and Sul Kyung-gu (Peppermint Candy, Oasis), alongside rising stars Zo In-sung (Hope, Moving) and Cho Yeo-jeong (Parasite). Netflix will be confident of its award-season chances for the film, which has been selected by South Korea as its pick for the Best International Feature race.
Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh’s pitch-black buddy comedy starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA operatives in Chile in the 1960s, was arguably the biggest crowd pleaser in Venice this year. The movie, which is going out worldwide via Searchlight Pictures, could also have awards legs, particularly for Malkovich, who gives a sharp, and surprisingly touching performance as a veteran CIA agent facing a self-reckoning.
Low-market tabloid sleaze were the subjects of two of the starry Venice competition entries this year. Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, divided critics, though most, including The Hollywood Reporter, were impressed by Pattinson’s performance. Critics were kinder to Danny Boyle’s Ink, an adaptation of James Graham’s stage play about Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of The Sun newspaper and the creation of his right-wing media empire. THR‘s chief film critic David Rooney said the film, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, remained “a chronicle more than a critique” but was still “vigorously entertaining.”
Among the European standouts in Venice this year were May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown, a stylish depiction of post-World War II Denmark, focused on a maid (Mathilde Arcel) whose past during the Nazi occupation threatens to unravel her future. El-Toukhy told THR in a pre-festival interview: “I’ve worked 16 hours a day for more than a year. I’ve spent all my savings. I’ve used every part of me to make this film and all the resources, all the muscle power I have.”
Florian Zeller’s psychological drama Bunker was also well-received. It stars Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem as a couple whose outwardly happy marriage is tested when Bardem, a star architect, is offered a lucrative commission to build an underground bunker for a tech billionaire.
See below the list of winners from the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, as they come in:
Volpi Cup for Best Actor
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Volpi Cup for Best Actress
Mathilde Arcel, Woman Unknown
Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress
Malou Khebizi, A Place to Heal
Luigi De Laurentis Award for Debut Film
House of the Wind, Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu
Armani Beauty Audience Award
I Matter, Alina Serban
Horizons, Best Film
Diane in the Loop, Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni
Horizons, Best Director
Jacqueline Lentzou, A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra
Horizons, Special Jury Prize
House of the Wind, Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu
Horizons, Best Actor
Riccardo Scamarcio, Children of the Monkey
Horizons, Best Actress
Laleh Marzban, Falling House
Horizons, Best Screenplay
Children of the Monkey, Tommaso Landucci
Best Short Film
A Few Moments of Happiness, Shaden Safieddine Tazi
Venice Classics, Best Restored Film
Long Night of 1943, Florestano Vancini
Venice Immersive, Grand Prize
The Pigeon Ring, Shixin Tao and Yuqi Zhang
Venice Immersive, Special Jury Prize
Out of the Ashes, Rory Mitchell and Nonny de la Peña
Venice Immersive, Achievement Prize
Empire at Sea, Peter Flaherty
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (previously announced)
George Clooney, Ellen Burstyn