Stories centering women took center stage at the 78th Venice International Film Festival, which lasted for over a week in the iconic Italian city. This year’s festival, one of the world’s oldest celebrations of global cinema alongside the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival, gave 92 films buzzy premieres Sept. 1–11. Academy Award–winning director Chloé Zhao, who took home the 2020 award for “Nomadland,” was among this year’s jury members, with previous Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho presiding.
The French drama “L’Evénement (Happening)” took home the most coveted accolade of the night, and a solid predictor of eventual awards season success: the Golden Lion. Director Audrey Diwan’s win marked the sixth time in the fest’s 78-year history that a female director has earned the award, and the second time in a row following Zhao’s “Nomadland” win.
Adapted from a book of the same name, “Happening” tells the story of Anne, a young woman in 1963 who becomes pregnant, sees the future she so carefully built up slip away, and decides to get an abortion—in a time where the act was strictly illegal. “I did this movie with anger,” Diwan said at the awards ceremony held on Sept. 11. “I did it with desire, also my heart and my head. I wanted ‘Happening’ to be an experience, a journey in the skin of this young woman.”
The Silver Lion Grand Jury prize went to Paolo Sorrentino’s forthcoming Netflix release “The Hand of God,” an autobiographical drama recounting the director’s childhood and trauma of losing his parents at a young age. Filippo Scotti, who plays the young version of Sorrentino, won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress for his portrayal of the director.
“The Hand of God” is just one of a handful of Netflix films that premiered at the festival, with Benedict Cumberbatch–starrer “The Power of the Dog” director Jane Campion winning best director and Maggie Gyllenhaal taking home the screenplay prize for her directing debut on “The Lost Daughter,” starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley.
The Volpi Cup for Best Actress went to Penelope Cruz for her portrayal of a single mother in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers.” The Oscar-winning performer dedicated the award to her family and husband Javier Bardem’s late mother (whose final words to her, she revealed in her speech, were “Coppa Volpi”). The prestigious award’s male counterpart went to John Arcilla, taking the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for “On The Job: The Missing 8,” a Philippine crime thriller.
Another film that focused on the plight of mothers and women, Gyllenhaal’s winning “The Lost Daughter” marked a monumental moment for her career; the film is based off of a novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante. “When I read Ferrante for the first time, there was a kind of shock from hearing things that I had always known deep inside myself were true spoken out loud, some secret truths about being a woman in the world,” Gyllenhaal said at the festival. “Of course, they’re not really secret, they’re just unspoken. In a way, as women, we’ve been born into an agreement to be silent...reading Ferrante broke the agreement.”
For more results and information, visit Venice Biennale’s website. And read Backstage’s guide to the Venice Film Festival here.
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