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Almodovar’s first English-language film wins Golden Lion award
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Nicole Kidman, Vincent Lindon win top actor awards
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Best Director goes to Brady Corbet for his epic ‘The Brutalist’
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Films screened at Venice often shine at the Oscars
By Crispian Balmer
VENICE, Sept 7 — Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language film, “The Room Next Door,” which tackles serious subjects such as euthanasia and climate change, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
The film, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, was greeted with an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered in Venice earlier this week – one of the longest standing ovations for a film in recent times.
Almodóvar is a darling of the festival circuit and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, uncompromising and often funny Spanish-language shows.
He also won an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language category in 1999 for his film “All About My Mother.”
Now at the age of 74 he has decided to try his hand at English, and focus his attention on questions of life, death and friendship. Speaking after receiving the award he said euthanasia should not be blocked by politics or religion.
“I believe it is a fundamental right of every human being to say goodbye to this world cleanly and with dignity,” he said in Spanish.
He also thanked his two female stars for their performances.
“This award really is theirs, this is a film about two women and these two women are Julianne and Tilda,” he said.
Although “The Room Next Door” was a likely winner, it was a surprise that the second-place Silver Lion award went to Italian director Maura Del Pero, who took home the prize for her slow-paced drama “Vermiglio,” set in the Italian Alps during World War II.
Australia’s Nicole Kidman won best actress for her sensual role in the erotic film “Babygirl,” in which she plays a callous CEO who endangers both her career and family by forming a toxic relationship with a young, scheming intern.
Kidman was in Venice on Saturday but did not attend the awards ceremony after she learned her mother had died unexpectedly.
France’s Vincent Lindon won best actor for “The Quiet Sun,” a timely, French-language drama about a family torn apart by far-right radicalism.
The road to the Oscars
The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for his 3 1/2 hour long film “The Brutalist”, which was shot on 70mm celluloid and is the epic story of a Hungarian genocide survivor, played by Adrien Brody, who tries to rebuild his life in the United States.
“We have the power to support each other and say to the big companies that are trying to push us, ‘No, it’s three-and-a-half hours long and it’s on 70mm,’” he said at the auditorium Saturday.
The festival marks the start of the awards season and regularly produces major Oscar nominations. Eight of the last 12 Oscar best director awards have gone to films screened at Venice.
The best screenplay award went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Loreaga for “I’m Still Here”, a film about Brazil’s military dictatorship, while the Special Jury Prize went to Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s film about abortion, “April”.
Among the films that returned empty-handed from Venice’s Lido island was Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie a Deux”, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, a sequel to his original film “The Joker”, which won the top prize here in 2019.
Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig as a gay drug addict, and Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas biopic “Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as the legendary Greek soprano, also received critical acclaim but won no awards.
This year the Venice jury was headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert.
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