Woman Unknown won the Venice Film Festival‘s coveted Golden Lion for best film.
John Malkovich (‘Wild Horse Nine’) and Mathilde Arcel (‘Woman Unknown’) won best actor and best actress, and Venice sensation ‘NAZA’ claimed the Special Jury Prize.
Among the other big winners were DAU director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who took home the Silver Lion for best director; Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, which won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize; and NAZA, which received the Special Jury Prize.
The Danish filmmaker continued onstage: “Making films is very collaborative, which requires sacrifices, and so thank you all for helping me tell the story. For me personally, Woman Unknown talks about the woman’s body as a battlefield. At the same time, the film tells the story of invisible women who are not and who do not have a voice … Thank you to the jury for this wonderful honor,” she added. “Thank you especially to you, Maggie, because you use your voice [to talk about] the lack of equal opportunities for the directors in the [competition].
Acclaimed Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong won the Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize for social drama Possible Love. Following a struggling working-class family and the well-to-do documentarian who picks them as a subject for her new film, his film received some of the best reviews out of Venice.
Netflix and producer Anonymous Content will be confident of its award-season chances for the feature, which has been selected by South Korea as its submission for the Oscars’ best international feature category. “Without the patience and faith of so many people, this film would not have been possible,” Lee said while collecting the award.
Possible Love also won the international film critics’ Fipresci award for best film in Venice.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky received some overdue praise for DAU. The Russian filmmaker built a sealed world in Ukraine, populated it with thousands of participants and filmed them for three years. Two decades, 14 films and innumerable scandals later, his original epic finally arrived in Venice.
NAZA, a documentary from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and a late addition to the Venice lineup, won the Special Jury Prize after a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at its Thursday night premiere. The Venice sensation features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. Its title, NAZA, comes from an acronym the Israeli military uses as a shorthand for civilian casualties.
“It’s honestly not very easy to stand here,” began Abraham as he and Szor accepted the trophy to raucous applause. “I’m thinking of all the people==the Israeli politicians, the journalists back home — who are now attacking this film, denying it, without even seeing it.”
“So much is being done to not look at reality. The reality is that since this festival started, just over these 10 days, Israel killed six Palestinian children in Gaza at least, a three-year-old girl at a school that was bombed, a seven-year-old with her father in a car, two sisters at home sleeping. The Israeli intelligence officers we spoke to told us about how this mass killing is systemic, not by accident but by design, actions and murder based on total dehumanization of the Palestinians,” he continued.
“This truth has been documented and is known from the very first day, thanks to Palestinian journalists, and more than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israelis; their voices were silenced and denied,” he said.
“We believe that the denial of a crime is what helps it persist, and that’s why it’s important for us that the Israelis see this film … [and] especially here in Italy because your government and the German government are blocking pressure on Israel that can end this, that Americans watch it because that country is funding much of the killing,” Abraham added, before thanking the doc’s producers
Riding the wave of immense Oscar buzz, John Malkovich claimed the prestigious Volpi Cup for best actor for his performance in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine.
The pitch-black buddy comedy, starring Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA operatives in Chile in the 1960s, was arguably the biggest crowd-pleaser in Venice this year. The movie is going out worldwide via Searchlight Pictures and boasts a great outing from Malkovich, who gives a sharp and surprisingly touching performance as a veteran CIA agent facing a self-reckoning.
Malkovich wasn’t in attendance to accept the prize in person. He told the crowd via a pre-recorded video: “I am really glad to have been chosen for this award which has been given to many actors. […] Thanks to Martin McDonagh for having written an incredible screenplay and for his exceptional direction and for having given me, in fact, the opportunity to play this fantastic role. Thanks to all my colleagues, especially Sam Rockwell,” he added. “I’m sorry, unfortunately, I can’t be there with you. I would have loved to be there, but I am currently filming another film.”
Danish star Arcel earned the Volpi Cup for best actress for her role in el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown. “This is my first lead role and it’s the first time I’ve participated in a film festival, and so I’m really extremely honored, and I’m really lucky to be here,” said an emotional Arcel. “I am truly fortunate to be in Venice with you, people who are really the best filmmakers, actors and actresses in the world, whom I’ve watched all my life.”
A Good Little Soldier from Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amédéo and Olivier Gorce took home the award for best screenplay.
The big winner from the Horizons (Orizzonti) section was Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s Diane in the Loop, a Belgian feature about a woman who sets out to avenge her mother when she finds out she was raped three years before Diane’s birth. Riccardo Scamarcio won Horizons’ best actor award 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.
