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.
Among the frontrunners 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.
A favorite going into the awards was 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 the winners from the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, as they come in:
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (previously announced)
George Clooney, Ellen Burstyn
Venice Immersive, Achievement Prize
Empire at Sea, Peter Flaherty
Venice Immersive, Special Jury Prize
Out of the Ashes, Rory Mitchell and Nonny de la Peña
Venice Immersive, Grand Prize
The Pigeon Ring, Shixin Tao and Yuqi Zhang
Venice Classics, Best Restored Film
Long Night of 1943, Florestano Vancini
