The winners of the 80th Venice International Film Festival will be announced shortly at a gala ceremony on the Lido Saturday night. You can follow the ceremony live on the festival’s website or on its YouTube channel.
The Venice festival jury, headed by jury president Damien Chazelle, includes directors Jane Campion, Martin McDonagh, Laura Poitras, Santiago Mitre and Mia Hansen-Love, Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri and Chinese actress Shu Qi. The jury will pick this year’s Golden and Silver Lion winners.
The dual strikes in Hollywood have meant the 2023 Biennale was less star-studded than usual but, judged by the films alone, it was a fine vintage.
The Hollywood Reporter critics praised such competition entries as Yorgos Lanthimos’ feminist fable Poor Things — which includes a potentially career-defining performance by star Emma Stone — Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein drama Maestro, in which Cooper plays the legendary conductor, and Carey Mulligan his wife Felicia Montealegre (another award-season favorite); David Fincher’s wry pulpy thriller The Killer starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton; and Ava DuVernay’s Origin, an examination of race in America told as a tender love story and starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Jon Bernthal. The reviews for Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which stars Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley and Patrick Dempsey were more mixed. Many praised the film, about a key turning point in the life of legendary Italian car maker Enzo Ferrari (Driver), as a return to form for the director of Heat and The Insider. Others groaned at the film’s casting — with no Italians in any of the major roles — and the uneven nature of the southern European accents on display.
On the actor front, alongside Stone’s barnstorming turn in Poor Things, Cooper’s performance in Maestro (putty nose aside) and Ellis-Taylor’s turn in Origin, critics singled out Caleb Landry Jones’ star-making role in Luc Besson’s Dogman. The film split audiences and critics but drew universal praise for Jones’ fearless performance as a man beaten down by life who finds redemption in dogs and drag.
Venice this year was also highly political. On the screen, there were bracing refugee dramas like Agnieszka Holland’s The Green Border about migrants caught between Belarus and Poland, and Matteo Garrone’s Me Captain, a tale of two Senegalese migrants trying to reach Italy. Off the screen, where the premiere of Woody Allen’s out-of-competition entry Coupe de Chance was accompanied by a small, but very vocal group of protestors chanting “no rape culture!” a reference to public sexual assault allegations levied at Allen by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, which he denies.
Over the festival’s first weekend, which Roman Polanski’s very poorly received new feature, The Palace, premiered, areas near the festival were plastered with banners that read “Island of rapists” and “no Golden Lion for predators.” Polanksi, who admitted to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977, is still a fugitive from U.S. justice and did not attend Venice this year.
On the business side, Venice was strong. There were domestic deals for Ferrari and Origin (Neon), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (Janus/Sideshow), and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (A24) ahead of their Lido premieres, a solid tally for a festival without a formal market.
See the winners below.
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