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Darío Menor
Madrid
Monday, 9 September 2024, 19:19
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Pedro Almodóvar was the big favourite of the night, so much so that one of Italy's most respected film critics, Paolo Mereghetti, threatened to chain himself in front of the Biennale's main hall if the Spanish film director did not win the Golden Lion.
Fortunately there was no need because the director from La Mancha won the Venice Film Festival's most coveted award on Saturday 7 September for his new film, The Next Room, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore and his first film to be shot entirely in English. The award came four decades after his first appearance at the Mostra and five years after he won the Golden Lion in Venice in recognition of his career,
"This is my first film in English, but the spirit is Spanish, so I continue in my language", said the director after dedicating the award to his family and, in particular, to his younger brother, the film producer Agustín Almodóvar. With their performance in The Next Room, which explores the controversial issue of euthanasia, Swinton and Moore performed "a miracle", for which Almodóvar said he could not find enough words to thank them.
"Leaving this world is a human right", he remarked in his speech in which he called on governments to pass "adequate laws" to allow euthanasia.
One of the great rivals of The Next Room at the 81st Venice Film Festival was Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, which had to settle for the Silver Lion for best director. This three-and-a-quarter hour film, which includes an interval, tells the story of the life of a Hungarian architect who emigrates to the United States. The Grand Jury Prize went to Vermiglio, directed by Maura Delpero, who drew inspiration from her ancestors to tell the story of a peasant family in the Italian Alps in the last years of the Second World War.
After wowing the critics with her courage in the role of the leading lady in Babygirl, Nicole Kidman also managed to convince the members of the jury, who awarded her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It must have been a difficult decision as there were also two other excellent candidates for the award: Tilda Swinton for her role in The Next Room and Fernanda Torres for the Brazilian film Ainda estou Aqui.
Directed by Walter Salles, Ainda estou Aqui was one of the evening's favourites, but had to settle for the award for best screenplay. Kidman was unable to collect the Volpi Cup in person due to the death of her mother, and was replaced by the director of Babygirl, Dutch director Halina Reijn.
Although Daniel Craig, for his role in Queer, and Adrien Brody, star of The Brutalist, were the favourites to win the award for Best Male Performance, it went to Vicent Lindon for his performance in the French film Jouer avec le Feux, directed by sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin. In this production, Lindon plays a working-class man who has to raise his two children alone after the death of their mother and is shaken by the extreme right-wing militancy of one of them.
In her speech, president of the jury, Isabelle Huppert, said that cinema is "in great shape" and added, "I woke up this morning thinking how lucky we are to have travelled in time and space and to have thought about the future with all these windows of creativity open".
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