VENICE, Italy (AP) — “Father Mother Sister Brother,” Jim Jarmusch’s quietly humorous relationship triptych, won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival Saturday. The film about the relationships between adult children, and with their parents, stars Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett.
It was an upset win over some of the festival’s bigger hits, including “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won the runner-up award, and Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice,” which left empty-handed.
“All of us here who make films are not motivated by competition,” Jarmusch said. “But I truly appreciate this unexpected honor.”
He thanked the festival for “appreciating our quiet film.” He said he related to Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who once said, while accepting an honor from the Academy Awards at an advanced age, that he was worried he still didn’t know what he was doing.
“I’m learning each time,” Jarmusch said.
Kaouther Ben Hania’s devastating Gaza docudrama “The Voice of Hind Rajab” won the Silver Lion, the runner-up prize. The film is about attempt to rescue a 6-year-old girl from a bullet ridden call in Gaza City in January 2024 and uses the real audio from her call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
The film premiered later in the festival, but its impact was not dulled. It received a 22-minute standing ovation after its premiere. She dedicated her award to the Red Crescent and “to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are the real heroes.”
Ben Hania in her remarks also called for an end to “this unbearable situation” in Gaza.
“Enough is enough,” she said.
She added: "The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real, until justice is served.”
Venice's acting, directing and other winners
The Alexander Payne-led jury named Chinese actor Xin Zhilei best actress for leading Cai Shangjun’s “The Sun Rises on Us All,” a story about a love triangle set in the world of sweatshops in Guangzhou. Italian actor Toni Servillo won best actor for playing a president at the end of his term in Paolo Sorrentino's “La Grazia.”
Benny Safdie took the best director prize for his Mark Kerr MMA biopic “The Smashing Machine,” which has kicked off Oscar buzz for its star, Dwayne Johnson.
“I never thought I’d be up here,” Safdie said. “To be here amongst the giants of the past and the giants here this year, it just blows my mind.”
He also thanked his subject, Kerr, and his stars Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson.
“You truly performed with no net, and we jumped off a cliff together,” Safdie said of Johnson.
Valérie Donzelli and Gilles Marchand were recognized with best screenplay for their gig economy drama “At Work,” a French film about a successful photographer who gives up everything to focus on writing, and ends up in poverty.
The special jury prize went to Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi for his lyrical Naples documentary “Below the Clouds.”
They also singled out Swiss actor Luna Wedler with the Marcello Mastroianni Award, which goes to a young actor, for her turn in the film “Silent Friend,” a poetic three-part story about a ginkgo tree in a medieval university town in Germany.
“Nebraska” filmmaker Payne presided over the main competition jury, which included Brazilian actor Fernanda Torres, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, French director Stéphane Brizé, Italian director Maura Delpero, Chinese actor Zhao Tao and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. The international group selected a particularly diverse batch of winners.
Winners spotlight wars in Gaza and Ukraine
Winners for the horizons sidebar, a discovery section led by French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, were announced first. “En El Camino,” about the world of long-haul trucking in Mexico from filmmaker David Pablos, won best film. Anuparna Roy was emotional accepting the best director prize for her debut feature, “Songs of Forgotton Trees,” about two migrant women in Mumbai.
Roy, who is Indian, devoted part of her remarks to the conflict in Gaza.
“Every child deserves peace, freedom, liberation, and Palestine is no exception,” Roy said. “I stand beside Palestine. I might upset my country but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
Armani Beauty’s audience award winning filmmaker Maryam Touzani (“Calle Málaga”) also used her remarks to spotlight Gaza.
“How many mothers have been made childless,” she said. “How many more until this horror is brought to an end? We refuse to lose our humanity.”
“Aftersun” filmmaker Charlotte Wells handed out the debut film prize to Nastia Korkia for “Short Summer,” who spoke about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Her film is a loosely autobiographical account of a child living with her grandparents during the Chechen war.
“I very much hope that we will keep our eyes wide-open and that we will find the strength to stop the war,” Korkia said.
Honoring Armani
The ceremony also included a tribute to the late Giorgio Armani, who died Thursday, with a standing ovation from the audience. Armani Beauty is a longtime sponsor of the festival.
“Thank you, Giorgio Armani, for teaching us that creativity lives in the spaces where disciplines meet - fashion, cinema, art, new materials, architecture - just as happens every day here at the Venice Biennale,” Italian architect Carlo Ratti said.
Oscars impact
This year’s main competition lineup included many possible Oscar heavyweights, though most of Hollywood's flashiest offerings came up short at the awards. Kathryn Bigelow set off a warning shot about nuclear weapons and the apparatus of decision-making with her urgent, and distressingly realistic, thriller “A House of Dynamite.”
Guillermo del Toro unveiled his “Frankenstein,” a sumptuously gothic interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic, with Oscar Isaac portraying Victor Frankenstein as a romantic madman and Jacob Elodri, naive and raw, as the monster. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons were strange and fierce as kidnapped and kidnapper in Yorgos Lanthimos’s provocative “Bugonia.” While they didn't prevail at the festival's awards, the films could still go on to be in the broader awards conversation.
Since 2014, the Venice Film Festival has hosted four best picture winners, including “The Shape of Water,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight” and “Nomadland.” Last year, they had several eventual Oscar-winning films in the lineup, including Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” which won three including best actor for Adrien Brody, Walter Salles’ best international feature winner “I’m Still Here,” and the animated short “In the Shadow of the Cypress.”
The previous Golden Lion winner, Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut “The Room Next Door,” a smash at Venice with an 18-minute standing ovation, received no Oscar nominations.
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