Golden Lion (Best Picture):
Pieta directed by Kim Ki-Duk (South Korea)
Hired by moneylenders, a man lives as a loan shark brutally threatening people for paybacks. This man, without any family therefore with nothing to lose, continues his merciless way of life regardless of all the pain he has caused to a countless number of people. One day, a woman appears in front of him claiming to be his mother. He coldly rejects her at first, but gradually accepts her in his life. He decides to quit his cruel job and to live a decent life. Then suddenly the mother is kidnapped. Assuming that it would be by someone he had hurt in the past, he starts to track down all the people he had harassed. The man finally finds the one, only to discover most horrifing dark secrets better left unrevealed.
Silver Lion (Best Director):
PARADISE: Faith directed byUlrich Seidl (Austria, France and Germany)
In PARADISE: Faith, Ulrich Seidl explores what it means to bear the cross. For Annamaria, an X-ray technician, paradise lies with Jesus. She devotes her vacation to missionary work, so that Austria may be brought back to the path of virtue. On her daily pilgrimage through Vienna, she goes from door to door, carrying a foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary. One day, after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confi ned to a wheelchair, comes home. Hymns and prayers are now joined by fighting. PARADISE: Faith recounts the stations of the cross of a marriage and the longing for love. PARADISE: Faith is the second film in Ulrich Seidl’s “PARADIES-Trilogy.” PARADISE: Faith, the first part, is about Annamaria’s sister Teresa, for whom paradise is to be found in more earthly love in Kenya.
Volpi Cup – Best Actor:
Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master directed by P.T. Anderson (U.S.)
A striking portrait of drifters and seekers in post World War II America, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master unfolds the journey of a Naval veteran who arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future—until he is tantalized by The Cause and its charismatic leader.
Volpi Cup – Best Actress:
Hadas Yaron in Fill The Void directed by Rama Burshtein (Israel)
Fill The Void tells the story of an Orthodox Hassidic family from Tel Aviv. Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream-cometrue, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira’s promised match. Everything changes when an offer is proposed to match Yochay—the late Esther’s husband—to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it’s too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls’ mother finds out that Yochay may leave the country with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart’s wish and her family duty…
Special Jury Award:
The Master directed by P.T. Anderson (U.S.)
Mastroianni Award – Best Young Actor:
Fabrizio Falco in Dormant Beauty directed by Marco Bellacchio and in È stato il figlio directed by Daniele Cipri
Dormant Beauty directed by Marco Bellacchio:
The film takes place in various parts of Italy over six days, which are Eluana Englaro’s last and whose story remains in the background. The stories of fictional characters from different faiths and ideologies are connected emotively to that case, in an existential reflection on the reasons for living life and for hope despite everything. A senator has to choose whether to vote for a law that goes against his conscience or not, going against the party line, whilst his daughter Maria, an activist in a pro-life movement, demonstrates outside the clinic where Eluana is being treated. Roberto, alongside his brother, is on the opposing secular front; an “enemy” who Maria falls in love with. Elsewhere, a great actress looks to her faith and a miracle to save her daughter, who has been in an irreversible coma for years, and for whom she has sacrificed her relationship with her son. Finally, there is the desperate Rossa who wants to die, but a young doctor called Pallido opposes her suicide with all his might. And against all expectations, at the end of the film, there is a reawakening…
È stato il figlio directed by Daniele Cipri:
The Ciraulo family lives on the outskirts of Palermo. Nicola, the father, manages to support everyone by selling scrap iron from disused ships. Although their life is tough, it’s peaceful. One day a stray bullet, fired by a mafia hit man, kills the youngest daughter. The family’s desperation is immeasurable. There is a glimmer of at least some economic hope when the Ciraulo’s neighbour Giacalone advises Nicola to apply for compensation for mafia victims. Assuming that the money will soon arrive, the family starts spending it before they have even received it, getting into debt with everyone. Nicola falls into the hands of a moneylender, a friend of Giacalone’s. When the money finally arrives, there is not much left once they have paid off their debts. The Ciraulo family do not have a bank account. The money sits on the table with the whole family sitting around it while they decide how they should invest it. Each idea receives short shrift from Nicola, who finally comes up with his own: to buy a Mercedes. A Mercedes is a symbol of wealth, for many people the only real sign that you have escaped poverty. But for the Ciraulo family the Mercedes becomes the symbol of the Misery of Wealth, a tool of defeat and ruin.
Best Screenplay:
Something in the Air directed by Olivier Assayas (France)
Paris, in the early 1970s. Gilles is a young high school student completely swept up in the political and creative effervescence of the times. Like his schoolmates, he wavers between radical commitment and more personal aspirations. Passing from sexual relations to artistic revelations on a journey through Italy and ending in London, Gilles and his friends have to make crucial choices in order to find themselves in a tumultuous age.
And a plethora of other awards, too many to list actually. So head over to the official press release for the full list of Collateral Awards of the 69th Venice Film Festival. I must say that, within time, there will be an award for every single film that plays at a film festival. Maybe even an award for Best Film Viewer.
