The power of document
Venice Festival’s Golden Lion goes to a non-fiction film – for the first time in the entire history of the festival
On Saturday the winners of the 70th Venice Film Festival (called Mostra in Italy) were announced on the Venice Lido. The main prize, the Golden Lion, went to the documentary saga Sacro GRA, directed by Gianfranco Rosi. The picture, which has been filmed for two years, tells about the routine of people who live in the suburbs, near the Rome ring-road highway, amidst constant noise produced by the flow of traffic and the planes landing in the nearby airport. By all appearances, the artistic quality of Sacro GRA moves the film beyond the limit between the action and non-action films. During the awarding ceremony, the apparently surprised Rosi underlined that he had never imagined that a documentary film would win in the Venice Film Festival. The jury’s decision caused quite a stir: the Italians have not won in Mostra for 50 years, and no documentary filmmaker has ever been awarded with the Golden Lion.
The festival’s grand prix went to Chinese (Taiwan) director Tsai Ming-liang for Stray Dogs (a co-production of France and Taiwan). Ming-liang is ascribed to the “second new wave” of the Chinese cinema, but he gained the cult status first and foremost among the European cinema lovers owing to his poetic and paradoxical works, such as The Wayward Cloud and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone. Stray Dogs tells a story of an underprivileged family residing in Taipei suburbs. As usual, this Ming-liang’s work shows restrained and apt humor, marginal characters, and the atmosphere of nice innuendoes. Mostra’s grand prix is the most important award compared to the rest of the prizes the director had won previously at world film forums.
The jury’s special prize went to Philip Groening (Germany). According to press reviews, his drama Die Frau des Polizisten (Policeman’s Wife), is outstanding due to quite an unusual plot structure and deep character development. For 54-year-old Groening the Venice award is an important token of formal recognition, for the status of one of the most interesting German filmmakers has stuck to him since the early 2000s.
The Best Director Silver Lion went to Greek Alexandros Avranas for the film Miss Violence, which focuses on a seemingly decent bourgeois, who rapes his daughters and granddaughters on a regular basis. Accordingly, the performer of this far from simple role, Themis Panou, was awarded with the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. An analogical award, Volpi Cup for Best Actress, went to the 82-year-old Italian Elena Cotta for the role of elderly Sicilian resident in Emma Dante’s film Via Castellana Bandiera.
Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope were named the Best Screenplay Writers for their film adaptation of the book by BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, published in 2009. In the British Stephen Frears’s movie Philomena Judi Dench (as a reminder: she played M in the Bondiana) plays a woman who had to abandon her newborn baby in youth. Many years later Philomena decides to find her son and sets out for a journey from Ireland to the US, accompanied by Martin Sixsmith (his role is performed by the co-author of the screenplay Steve Coogan).
Finally, the FIPRESCI prize went to psychological thriller Tom at the Farm by Franco-Canadian Xavier Dolan, this year’s debutant of the festival. All the films shot by the young (24-year-old) director, starting from his debut I Killed My Mother, which Dolan shot when he was 19, have been until recently accepted by the Cannes Festival for its parallel programs. Tom at the Farm is a story about a young copywriter Tom. The hero, played by Dolan, goes to a farm, to the funeral of his lover who was killed in a car accident. On the spot he finds out that his lover’s mother was totally unaware of the sexual orientation of her son. The deceased’s brother threatens to kill Tom if he reveals the truth to his mother. Further the story is getting increasingly tenser.
William Friedkin, who shot the classic horror film Exorcist, won the honorable Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
A total of 20 feature films took part in the competition of the 70th Venice Festival.
The decision of the jury, headed by the classic of Italian cinema Bernardo Bertolucci, aroused unequivocal reaction in the press and among film critics. However, to make our own opinion as for which of the Venice films was worth of awards, and which – not, we need to watch them – in cinema, on the Internet, or at the approaching Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival.
