Look at everything with activism – Newspaper Kommersant No. 167 (7368) of 09/12/2022

The 79th Venice Film Festival ended with the victory of the only documentary in the main competition. It’s called All Beauty and Bloodshed and directed by Laura Poitras. The decisions of the jury chaired by actress Julianne Moore are commenting Andrey Plakhov.

In fact, one could expect the worst, for example, that the “Golden Lion” would be given to “The Whale” by Darren Aronofsky or “Son” by Florian Zeller. But both of these predominantly male dramas, filmed with unbearable sentimentality, were beyond the attention of the feminist-oriented jury.

At the end of the festival, persistent rumors spread that Moore was lobbying for the French film Saint-Omer for the main prize. This would be logical, given that it was filmed by Alice Diop, originally from Senegal, and filmed in the spirit of the “agenda”, with two black heroines, one of whom acts as a modern-day Medea. This topical picture received its lion’s share of recognition in the form of the second-ranking Grand Prix of the jury “Silver Lion”. In addition, she received the Luigi De Laurentiis “Lion of the Future” prize awarded by a separate jury for the best feature debut (before that, Diop had successfully worked as a documentary filmmaker).

But the most prestigious Golden Lion prize – the main one at the Venice Film Festival – went to another film, also shot by a female director, who also successfully proved herself in documentary films. Laura Poitras has 61 films to her credit as a producer and 11 directorial credits, including the Oscar-winning Citizenfour: The Truth of Snowden. The new tape is dedicated to another character from the category of dissidents and fighters against injustice – this is Nan Goldin, a photographer and famous artist who directed her incredible energy to fight the Sackler family. This family, known as the philanthropists of major museums, enriched themselves by hooking consumers on OxyContin, the drug that claimed the lives of half a million Americans. Both Goldin and Poitras represent the activism of outstanding personalities without ideological dogmas and incantations – this is what makes them interesting.

To award the only documentary in the program does not mean to humiliate the rest of the contenders for the Golden Lion, among which are very large names and works? The jury managed to avoid such an impression. Of the most significant films of the competition, almost all received one or even two awards. First of all, the Banshee of Inisherina, awarded for the best screenplay by Martin McDonagh, an Irish-born playwright and director who made a patriotic tragicomedy about his historical homeland. This talented film, filled with tenderness and humor, rose above the general level of the festival, like a snowy peak. And the acting work of Colin Farrell eclipsed all other male roles and deservedly awarded the Volpi Cup from the grand jury. A similar Volpi Cup for best actress was awarded to Cate Blanchett, who created the controversial, nuanced image of the conductor in the film Tar. And although she also had strong competitors, the superiority over them of today’s number one actress in Hollywood was just as obvious.

In addition to the main acting award in Venice, a prize is awarded to the best young performer or performer – the Marcello Mastroianni Prize. He went to Taylor Russell from the film “With giblets”, who showed a noticeable acting potential in the role of a cannibal girl. But the matter was not limited to this: Luca Guadagnino received the Silver Lion for directing this spectacular picture. Due to the specifics of its genre and material, it was received ambiguously, but, undoubtedly, it became a cult among young people thanks to its idol Timothée Chalamet. And the director himself basked in the rays of this cult: girl fans on the red carpet greeted him with cries of “Luka!” and begged for an autograph (one of them turned out to be like a picture of a penis).

The special jury prize was awarded to the film “Without Bears” by Jafar Panahi, an Iranian director who is subjected to political repression in his homeland and is now behind bars. Even before his last imprisonment, he, being restricted to leave the country, managed to film and send to the festival this picture, the theme of which is precisely total lack of freedom. Panahi himself participates in the role of himself: he is making a documentary about a man and woman who love each other, who are trying to escape to Europe and find themselves in difficult moral dilemmas. At the same time, the disgraced director, finding himself in a remote village near the Iranian border, falls under the suspicion of the authorities that he intends to escape. Finally, in the village itself, he becomes a witness to the tragedy of young lovers who become victims of the patriarchal way of life and prejudices.

There were no Russian films officially at the festival. The list of participating countries in the catalog includes the USSR: under this heading, in the program of restored film classics, the film “Bro” by Tajik Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov, filmed just in the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union, is shown. And yet, one modern film, mostly Kazakh, but with Russian participation, was shown in the Horizons Extra program – this is Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Goliath about the mafia-feudal customs of the fictional village of Karatas. The film, which starred Kazakh and Russian actors, was awarded by the organization of independent Italian critics and the Bisato d`oro award.