Venice Film Festival Awards: Pedro Almodóvar Wins Golden Lion for ‘The Room Next Door’
The 2024 Venice Film Festival awards ceremony has wrapped up after a sweltering week and a half on the Lido.
The prestigious Golden Lion award for best film went to Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. The Spaniard’s first-ever English-language feature received a whopping 17-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the festival. Almodóvar said in his acceptance speech Saturday: “I would like to dedicate it to my family, who is here now… This movie The Room Next Door, it is my first movie in English.. but the spirit is Spanish.”
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His film, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, follows best-selling writer Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) as they rekindle their friendship after losing touch. As they immerse themselves in past memories, anecdotes, art and movies, Martha, battling terminal cervical cancer, wants to die with dignity and asks Ingrid to be in the next room when she takes a euthanasia pill.
The Silver Lion best director prize went to Brady Corbet for his three-and-a-half-hour spectacle The Brutalist, starring Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones. The feature, a biopic on an imaginary Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor, László Tóth, who immigrates to the postwar U.S., was widely considered the critics’ favorite at Venice this year.
Protagonist Pictures was the international sales agent on Corbet’s film and sold all international rights to Focus Features. CAA Media Finance is repping U.S. rights and arranging the project’s financing.
Nicole Kidman took home the best actress actress award for her role in the erotic thriller Babygirl opposite Antonio Banderas and Harris Dickinson, which all but confirmed this year’s Venice was embracing sex on screen. But Kidman wasn’t able to accept the award herself as her mother, Janelle Ann Kidman, has died, director Halina Reijn revealed when she accepted the award on Kidman’s behalf. Reijn read remarks from Kidman that said in part, “I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her… I am beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you. The collision of life and art is heartbreaking and my heart is broken.”
Elsewhere, the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to Vermiglio by Maura Delpero. Vincent Lindon won best actor for his performance in The Quiet Son, about a father and son separated by their political ideologies. The Special Jury Prize went to April, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili.
The Orizzonti (Horizons) award for best actor went to Francesco Gheghi for Familia, a film that explores the cyclical nature of violence, directed by Francesco Costabile, and Kathleen Chalfant won best actress for her role in Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, about an octogenarian woman transitioning to life in assisted living.
Friedland won the Orizzonti (Horizons) best director and best debut film, the Lion of the Future prize, with Familiar Touch. She used her acceptance speech to tell the audience: “I’m accepting this award on the 76th anniversary of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. … I stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their struggle for liberation.”
The first awards of the night were the Venice Immersives, the first of which went to Barry Gene Murphy and May Abdalla for Impulse: Playing with Reality, a mixed-reality documentary. Shortly after, Gwenael Fran?ois’ Oto’s Planet won the Venice Immersive Special Jury Prize, and Ito Meikyū won Boris Labbé the Venice Immersive Grand Prize.
In the Venice Classics section, best restored film went to Nanni Moretti for Ecce Bombo.
The world’s oldest film festival was at its best this year with features such as Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, getting their world premieres at the Sala Grande. Meanwhile, George Clooney and Brad Pitt whipped fans into a frenzy with the premiere of Wolfs.
Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig teamed up to debut Queer, and Todd Phillips’ sequel Joker: Folie à Deux, with Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix, rounded out the heavy hitters Wednesday night. It’s safe to say Alberto Barbera, the long-running director of the Venice Film Festival, pulled off a top-shelf line-up for this year’s 81st edition of the event (which ran Aug. 28-Sept. 7).
On the documentary side, there was also Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ music doc One to One: John & Yoko, which focuses on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s historic 1972 concerts at Madison Square Garden; 2073 from Amy and Senna filmmaker Asif Kapadia; Separated from The Fog of War director Errol Morris; and Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, a look at notorious German documentarian Leni Riefenstahl.
Justin Kurzel’s new feature, The Order, a thriller about a group of bank-robbing white supremacists in the Pacific Northwest, had Nicholas Hoult, Jude Law and Tye Sheridan on the Lido, too, finishing up with applause that went on more than seven minutes.
Venice remained a propellant of excellent TV: highlights include Alfonso Cuarón’s psychological thriller Disclaimer, an AppleTV+ limited series starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen, which will bow worldwide on Oct. 11; and M – Son Of The Century from Darkest Hour director Joe Wright, an eight-part look at the rise of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, played by Italian star Luca Marinelli.
A full list of the 2024 Venice Film Festival award winners follows.
Main Competition
Golden Lion — Best Film
The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar
Silver Lion — Grand Jury Prize
Vermiglio
Maura Delpero
Silver Lion — Best Director
Brady Corbet for The Brutalist
Special Jury Prize
April, Dea Kulumbegashvili
Best Actor
Vincent Lindon for The Quiet Son
Best Actress
Nicole Kidman for Babygirl
Best Screenplay
Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega for I’m Still Here
Orizzonti (Horizons) Section
Best Screenplay
Happy Holidays
Scandar Copti
Best Actress
Kathleen Chalfant for Familiar Touch
Best Actor
Francesco Gheghi for Familia
Best Young Actor
Paul Kircher for And Their Children After Them
Best Film
The New Year That Never Came
Bogdan Muresanu
Best Director
Sarah Friedland for Familiar Touch
Special Jury Prize
One of Those Days When Hemme Dies
Murat F?rato?lu
Best Short Film
Who Loves the Sun
Arshia Shakiba
Lion of the Future — Venice Award for a Debut Film
Familiar Touch
Sarah Friedland
Orizzonti Extra Audience Award — Armani Beauty
Shahed (The Witness)
Nader Saeivar
Venice Classics Section
Best Documentary on Cinema
Chain Reactions
Alexandre O. Phillipe
Best Restored Film
Ecce Bombo
Nanni Moretti
Vennice Immersive Section
Venice Immersive
Impulse: Playing with Reality
Barry Gene Murphy, May Abdalla
Special Jury Prize
Oto’s Planet
Gwenael Fran?ois
Grand Prize
Ito Meikyū
Boris Labbé
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