Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma just took a leap forward in the Oscar race with its Golden Lion win at the Venice Film Festival. Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite also increased its year-end awards odds with a win in the festival’s Grand Jury category.
Last year, Guillermo del Toro took home the Golden Lion for The Shape of Water which went on to earn the Best Picture Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards. This year Guillermo del Toro handled the job of the Venice Film Festival’s jury president and had the honor of presenting his friend, Alfonso Cuaron, with the festival’s highest honor.
Roma is described as writer/director Cuarón’s most personal film. According to the synopsis provided by Netflix, the film “follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s.”
Venice Film Festival Awards:
- GOLDEN LION for Best Film – Roma by Alfonso Cuarón
- SILVER LION GRAND JURY PRIZE – The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos
- SILVER LION AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR – Jacques Audiard in The Sisters Brothers
- COPPA VOLPI for Best Actress – Olivia Colman in The Favourite
- COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor – Willem Dafoe in At Eternity’s Gate by Julian Schnabel
- AWARD FOR BEST SCREENPLAY – Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- SPECIAL JURY PRIZE – The Nightingale by Jennifer Kent
- MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor or Actress – Baykali Ganambarr in The Nightingale
Venice Award for a Debut Film
- LION OF THE FUTURE “LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” VENICE AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM – The Day I Lost My Shadow by Soudade Kaadan
Horizon Awards
- BEST FILM – Kraben Rahu (Manta Ray) by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng
- BEST DIRECTOR – Emir Baigazin for Ozen (The River)
- JURY PRIZE – Anons (The Announcement) by Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun
- BEST ACTRESS – Natalya Kudryashova in Tchelovek Kotorij Udivil Vseh (The Man Who Surprised Everyone)
- BEST ACTOR – Kais Nashif in Tel Aviv on Fire
- BEST SCREENPLAY – Pema Tseden for Jinpa
- BEST SHORT FILM – Kado by Aditya Ahmad
Venice Classics
- BEST DOCUMENTARY ON CINEMA – The Great Buster: A Celebration by Peter Bogdanovich
- BEST RESTORED FILM – La Notte Di San Lorenzo by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
