Almost ten days have passed since the announcement of the winners of the exhibition, it’s time to think with a cool head, away from the euphoria of Lido.
Golden Lion He went to Poor things! Yorgos Lanthimos, and as you may recall from this article, it was said almost from the beginning that Leone’s film was on the air.
The film is a mixture of science fiction and coming-of-age film in which the main character, an adult woman, is brought back to life as a mad scientist with the brain of the fetus she carried in her mother’s womb. time of her death. From this perspective, when we open the revenue agency website, it’s like a mixture of Big, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and us.
But we’ll talk about it when it’s released in Italy, which is scheduled for January 25, 2024; If you’re traveling to the States, know that the film will be released there on December 8th, but before entering the theater, remember that the film is in the original language and not dubbed, you know, Favino? During the festival, the film always topped the ratings of the foreign press and the Italian press with the highest average, so let’s just say an important award was expected. Besides the most important statuette, I like to remember that the director won an expensive watch from a French brand whose name begins with the letter C: I don’t know why, but I have a real disturbing obsession in which I imagine the winners falling into a trap. in a champagne saber, wasting 50 thousand hours in a bar like it was prom night. If you know a PR for this brand that ends with artier, please let me write an encouraging message on WhatsApp, thank you.
Silver Lion for best director stayed at home and went to Matteo Garrone with I’m the captain released almost immediately after the Venice premiere. The director is introducing the film, so be on the lookout.
The film also won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Emerging Actor Seydoux Sarra. I’m the captain Essentially, it’s a road movie about two Senegalese cousins who decide to go on a “road trip” – that is, cross Africa to get to Europe.
The film’s strength lies primarily in its storytelling, so much so that it feels like the director is keeping the magical realism elements of his film to a minimum in order to take as little space as possible from the story being told – as much as possible. perhaps, according to Garrone himself, from a non-Western point of view.
In short, for a society like ours, in which one of the greatest manifestations of separation from one’s family of origin is that a newcomer leaves for university at the age of 18 – this sixteen-year-old teenager who secretly leaves his mother Crossing the desert must at least provide us with a different perspective than that seen by the packets below. The story we are given is simple, personal and universal at the same time: the hero decides to chase his dream and does everything possible to make it come true, completing his arc of transformation, thanks to which he never loses his innocence (the last character of the trait is perhaps the most strong mechanism of the entire film).
At the time of writing, the film has grossed $9 million and is currently in 4th position at the Italian box office.
Another film about migrants, but from a geopolitical point of view, received an award Special Jury Prize: Green border Agnieszka Holland: a film about migrants stuck in Belarus, a story even closer to us, which, according to most critics, is worth listening to. Despite their very different typologies, the presence of these two films and their importance compared to the exhibition’s main prizes means that migration is such a hot topic in Europe that it deserves top stories.
The Grand Jury Prize (yes, I know: it looks like the same prize, but it’s not) went to Evil doesn’t exist From Ryusuke Hamaguchi which you probably remember from Drive My Car, the film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2022. The film does not yet have a release date in Italy, but when it comes out you will notice it, because your friend is rabid with Japanese cinema, we will be happy to take you to the nearest cinema to watch it. But fear not, because this time the film is less than two hours long, so you don’t even have to take time off from work.
Best Screenplay Award instead it went to Pablo Larraín and Guillermo Calderon. El Conde, in films in which the dictator Pinochet is depicted as a vampire; We’ll talk about it in the next few days, the film is on Netflix. This award was also a surprise in light of the fact that the film did not receive much praise, so much so that it received an average of 2.6 stars out of 5 in the international press ratings.
Chazelle and company then awarded both Fox Cups two American actors: Cailee Spaeny For Priscilla Sofia Coppola (what about Emma Stone?) e Peter Sarsgaard For Memory Michelle Franco. The former is practically an aspiring actress, and the latter has an endless filmography as a supporting actor, so this may seem like the perfect opportunity to change her career, we’ll see what happens to her career during awards season. Meanwhile, some ill-intentioned people pointed out that the only winners were the Americans with a union “waiver” in hand, who were therefore able to promote the film.
Speaking of launching pads, Venice has always been an important stop on competition films in recent years, meaning whoever wins something at the Lido then continues their leap into what’s known as “awards season.”
In fact, just last year this happened with Gli Spiriti dell’Isola, Tar, Blonde and The Whale: all of which were presented at Venice and then nominated in various Oscar categories. Let’s hope Venice brings good luck to Garrone, who is currently on the Italian list of nominees for best foreign film.
What remains of this edition
Of course, the Favino-Driver controversy spawned a significant number of memes, but also started an interesting debate about the state of Italian cinema, especially from the point of view of non-Italians.
Guadagnino was then present throughout the event in flâneur mode, finally caught having lunch with Jacob Elordi in the hopes of recruiting him for his next project over a plate of sardines in saora.
Last but not least, the six Italian films in competition: can we ever achieve such a high figure again? Well, we hope so, but we also hope that Italian cinema can expand its narrative horizons by looking further, perhaps at least beyond Rome.