The Greek Yorgos Lanthimos has won the Golden Lion at this 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival with Poor Creatures, the gothic fable of women’s liberation that turns Emma Stone into a sort of Frankenstein avid for knowledge and sex in her risky role as Bella Baxter . The film, with shocking sex scenes, was a top favorite after its screening last week. Lanthimos has praised the overwhelming performance of the American actress, who has not been able to attend the Mostra due to the Hollywood actors’ strike. A strike that has marked this very special edition with practically no stars on the red carpet, but which has counterattacked with ten days of powerful cinema that has displayed a highly distributed list of winners.
The Japanese Hamaguchi continues his unstoppable career after winning the Oscar for best international film with Drive My Car and this Saturday he won the Grand Jury Prize for Evil Does Not Exist, a hymn to nature as mysterious as it is disconcerting. The Italian Matteo Garrone has been recognized as best director for Io capitano, the journey of two young people, Seydou and Moussa, who leave Dakar to set out on their way to Europe.
The film portrays a contemporary odyssey through the dangers of the desert, the horrors of the detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea. Filmed in Senegal and Morocco, the director has sent a message of support to Morocco after the terrible earthquake that has left numerous victims. A drama, that of immigration, which Agnieszka Holland also addresses with shocking rawness in The Green Border, winner of the special jury prize for narrating the tragedy of immigrants who come from Africa and the Middle East, humiliated on the border between Poland and Belarus. . “It has been a very difficult film to make. People are still hiding in the forests. There are people who help and believe that their duty is humanity. I dedicate the award to the activists,” said the veteran Polish director to applause. .
Chilean Pablo Larraín took the stage to collect the award for best screenplay for El conde, co-written with Guillermo Calderón. The film depicts the dictator Augusto Pinochet as a vampire over 250 years old. No to impunity!, Larraín declared at the end of his speech.
The Volpi Cup for best actor went to an emotional Peter Sarsgaard for his role as a man who knows he will soon be lost to dementia in Memory, by Michel Franco. The American interpreter has charged in his long speech against the use of AI in the industry and has appealed for the human connection. And Cailee Spaeny, the young protagonist of Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s film that portrays how a 14-year-old Priscilla and Elvis Presley met in Germany, has won the Volpi Cup for best actress. “It is the most magical and unexpected experience of my life”, she has said, not quite believing her luck. The young protagonist of Io capitano, Seydou Sarr, has collected the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Emerging Actor.
The Luigi de Laurentiis Award for Best First Feature went to Taiwanese Lee Hong-Chi for the drama Love is a gun. Horizons, the second most important section of the Mostra, dedicated to new avant-garde and expressive currents, has awarded the best film Explanation for everything, by the Hungarian Gábor Reisz, who has asked for the industry’s support for the young talents of his country, and the Swedish Mika Gustafson as best director for Paradise is burning.
In the Author’s Day, where the Basque Víctor Iriarte was competing with his first fiction feature Above all at night, the Canadian Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, a coming-of-age black comedy and horror about a young woman, has emerged as the winner. vampire who needs to feel a personal connection to her prey.
