Andrey Plakhov about who received awards at the 80th Venice Film Festival

The Venice 80th anniversary festival ended with a convincing victory for the film “The Poor and Unfortunate” by the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos, which was expectedly awarded the Golden Lion. This main award, like most other prizes, was not surprising Andrey Plakhov.

The only exceptions include the decision of the jury under Damien Chazelle to admit best actress Cailee Spaeny, who played Elvis Presley’s wife in the biopic Priscilla. She had such strong competitors as Alba Rohrwacher and Jessica Chastain, who appeared in other competition films. And, of course, Emma Stone from Lanthimos’s film. The jury, however, chose to support the young artist of rather modest data. And, it seems, at the same time – the director of “Priscilla” Sofia Coppola and, in her person, the poor, unfortunate American film industry, depleted by the actors’ strike.

The choice of Peter Sarsgaard as best actor: in Michel Franco’s film “Memory” he touchingly played a restless hero suffering from dementia. This film, like “Out of Season” by Stéphane Brize, two local humanistic psychodramas about little people, their unresolved traumas and difficult relationships, were shown towards the end of the festival, found their fans and created a counterbalance to films with big themes and claims. But they still couldn’t qualify for the awards.

Pablo Larraín and Guillermo Calderon tagged prize for the script Chilean film “The Count” – a surreal biography of the dictator Pinochet, presented in the image of an immortal vampire. The Grand Jury Prize “Silver Lion” – the second most important at the festival – went to the environmental parable of the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi “Evil Does Not Exist”. The conflict between a village community and a greedy company intending to build a glamping site on this territory escalates from a purely social to an existential one. And at some point, nature itself intervenes in the course of events, and things inevitably lead to tragedy.

“Silver Lion” best director awarded to the Italian Matteo Garrone for the film “I, Captain”, and Seydoux Sarr, who plays the young adventurous Senegalese in it, received Marcello Mastroianni Memorial Prize, intended for young artists. This painting devoted to theme of mass migration, like the “Green Border” by Polish woman Agnieszka Holland: she was awarded Special jury prize.

It was clear from the dissatisfied faces of both laureates that they were counting on more significant awards.

In fact, these films were the most talked about in the second half of the festival, and each of them received several prizes from numerous unofficial juries. Support would be especially important for Agnieszka Holland, who was attacked in her homeland by conservatives and far-rights for her critical portrayal of the actions of the country’s authorities during the humanitarian crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. Receiving the prize, Holland noted that many refugees are still in the border area, suffering and in urgent need of help. “And we don’t help them not because we don’t have the funds for this, but because we don’t want to,” she said.

With all the sympathy that the dramatic fates and painful wanderings of migrants aroused among the festival audience, the main artistic experience was winning film “The poor unfortunates.” Intellectual brilliance, emotions, sensuality, magnificent decor, inexhaustible imagination are among its undeniable advantages. Plus a first-class performance by Emma Stone, who proved herself to be a brave actress, fluent in the tools of the grotesque and eccentric. Her heroine, a victim of abuse and a loveless marriage, is brought back to life after suicide with the help of an experimental scientist and goes through many stages of personal growth. She travels the world, embraces the ideas of socialism, eventually becomes a doctor and transforms the world around her into a divine utopia. Feminist motifs are woven into this picture easily and with humor, which Lanthimos previously for some reason hid under the mask of a cold analyst.

IN “Horizons” program The main prize was awarded to the film by Hungarian Gabor Reisz, “An Explanation of Everything.” A “Lion of the Future” – the prize for the best debut was won by the film “Love is a Gun” by Taiwanese director Li Hongchi. IN “Venetian Classics” program notable events were screenings of Sergei Parajanov’s film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” and the author’s version of “Andrei Rublev” by Andrei Tarkovsky.