Philippine film The Woman Who Left, a revenge tale shot in black and white by director Lav Diaz, won the top Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival yesterday.
“I want to dedicate this film to the Filipino people and their struggle, and humanity’s struggle,” Diaz said as he received his prize.
Best actor went to Argentina’s Oscar Martinez for his portrayal of a cynical Nobel Prize-winning author who returns to his village for the first time in 40 years in the comedy on art and fame, The Distinguished Citizen.
US actress Emma Stone received the best actress prize for her depiction of a struggling thespian who falls head over heels in love with a jazz pianist – played by Ryan Gosling – in US musical La La Land.
“I wish I could be there to make sure it’s not an elaborate prank,” quipped Stone in a video message, saying that she could “think of no better place in the world than Venice to premier La La Land, we had a wonderful time”.
Fashionista-turned-director Tom Ford was awarded the Silver Lion grand jury prize for Nocturnal Animals, a romantic thriller about former lovers starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal, with a violent revenge tale told as a story within a story.
The Silver Lion for best director was divided this year between Mexico’s Amat Escalante for The Untamed, about the sex life of an extraterrestrial, tentacled creature, and Russia’s Andrei Konchalovsky for Holocaust drama Paradise.
Jackie, a bio-drama which stars Natalie Portman as the grief-stricken widow of US president John F Kennedy, meanwhile took best screenplay, with Chilean director Pablo Larrain saying the triumph was all Portman’s, “the only woman who could have played this role”.
“I felt like it was the most dangerous film I’ve ever done, because everyone knows what Jackie looked like, sounded like, walked like,” Portman had admitted to press at the star-studded festival, where A-listers arrived by water taxi.
La La Land and The Distinguished Citizen were earlier tipped as favourites to win the Golden Lion award.
La La Land kicked off the world’s oldest film festival and immediately brought the house down.
Top international film critics, gathered on the glamorous Lido di Venezia for the 10-day fest, had cheered the quirky tale, a joyful tribute to the Golden Age of American musicals.
Terrence Malick’s long-awaited Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, a documentary on the life and death of the universe, moved critics and the public alike with its use of stunning special effects and real-life images of earth’s most breathtaking creations.
Venice has strengthened its reputation in recent years as a launch-pad for the Oscars – with Gravity, Birdman and Spotlight all premiering here.
A total of 20 films competed for the Golden Lion, including Ana Lily Amirpour’s second film Bad Batch, a cannibal love story with Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves about a young girl who ends up on the menu in a futuristic United States.
The festival has featured dozens of world premieres out of competition, including Italian master Paolo Sorrentino’s first TV series The Young Pope, featuring a brilliantly Machiavellian Jude Law as the Catholic Church’s first ever American pope.