Venice Award Winners Being Announced (Updating Live)

Christopher Vourlias Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland has remained defiant despite a wave of vicious political attacks and online hate speech as she prepares to release her Venice Special Jury Prize-winning refugee drama “Green Border” in Poland on Sept. 22.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Zurich Film Festival, which runs Sept. 28 – Oct.

Guy Lodge Film Critic That perky exclamation point sets the tone for “Coup!,” a story of murder, class struggle, One Percent entitlement and a global pandemic that nonetheless unfolds with all the eager, scrappy energy of an off-Broadway musical, minus most of the songs. The pandemic in question is not the one you’re thinking of — Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman’s puckish comic thriller unfolds against the dire backdrop of the 1918 Spanish Flu — but it also sort of is, as its study of wealthy exceptionalism in a time of national crisis is clearly intended to chime with more recent memories of regimented distancing and mixed safety messages from on high.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The political backlash surrounding Agnieszka Holland’s Venice Special Jury Prize-winning refugee drama “Green Border” hasn’t kept the movie from being a hot seller. The film explores the injustice and terror perpetrated at the Polish-Belarusian border from the perspective of refugees, Polish activists and border guards.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Unorthodox family structures yield correspondingly unpredictable drama in “Housekeeping for Beginners,” a vital, febrile multi-character study that further confirms writer-director Goran Stolevski as a talent to be reckoned with. Departing radically from the poise of his folk-horror debut “You Won’t Be Alone” and the gentle intimacy of its swift follow-up “Of an Age,” this study of domestic, romantic and generational conflicts in a crowded queer household instead embraces a spirit of antic chaos, both in subject matter and jagged, hit-the-ground-running execution.

Speaking at the Venice Film Film Festival winners’ press conference, Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos said he was “personally very disappointed” that his lead actress Emma Stone couldn’t be with him to enjoy the film’s Golden Lion win, but that he also “understands the cause”, referring to the SAG-AFTRA strike which has kept the actress away.

Peter Sarsgaard and Cailee Spaeny were among the winners at the 2023 Venice Film Festival!

Guy Lodge Film Critic The closing-night awards ceremony of the 80th Venice Film Festival has concluded, with the critical favorite and presumed frontrunner, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Emma Stone-starring adult fantasy “Poor Things,” living up to the buzz — it has taken the Golden Lion from Damien Chazelle’s jury. Other winners include Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Agnieszka Holland, Matteo Garrone and U.S.

Refresh for latest…: The 80th Venice Film Festival officially draws to a close this evening with the main awards, including the top prize Golden Lion, soon to be handed out inside the Sala Grande.

Ben Croll Remarking on the sterling success of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” in Venice and of Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” in Cannes, “All Quiet on the Western Front” director Edward Berger has noticed a trend – and he hopes to apply that recognition back to the German industry. “Film4 came and took [filmmakers like Jonathan Glazer,] Yorgos Lanthimos and Steve McQueen and gave them the opportunity, fostering them and sheltering them and [helping] them make their movies — and look where they are now,” said Berger at a Venice Film Festival panel.

Christopher Vourlias The fall festival circuit features a powerhouse lineup of Polish cinema that showcases an industry in full stride, with hard-hitting topical dramas, award-season hopefuls and potential box-office breakouts highlighting the strength and diversity of filmmaking in a country with a storied cinematic history. Among the hotly anticipated premieres at this week’s Toronto Film Festival is “The Peasants,” a lavish, hand-painted animated feature from the filmmaking team behind Oscar nominee and box-office sensation “Loving Vincent.” Meanwhile, three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland will be on hand for the North American premiere of “Green Border,” her searing portrayal of Europe’s refugee crisis that just bowed in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Marta Balaga Controversy over Venice title “Green Border” continues to heat up as director Agnieszka Holland gave an ultimatum to Poland’s Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro following his comments about her film. According to the statement shared with Variety, Holland has hired the lawyers Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram and Michał Wawrynkiewicz.

Even if the critical reactions have been mixed, Italian films have proven much stronger than usual at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with a notable resurgence of genre filmmaking in the likes of Adagio and Enea. Ironically, Matteo Garrone, the one local director in the selection whose actual stock in trade is genre of all stripes — gangster realism (Gomorrah, Dogman), satirical comedy (Reality), and baroque fantasy (Tale of Tales) — arrived this year with a blisteringly topical drama that might be his most traditional, and best, yet.

Republic Pictures President Dan Cohen and producer Annabelle Dunne were among the main representatives of William Friedkin’s last film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial at its posthumous world premiere at Venice Film Festival over the weekend.

Guy Lodge Film Critic About 20 minutes pass in “Enea” before someone asks the young, handsome, splendidly attired title character what he does for a living, during which time audiences are likely to be wondering the same thing. This, to be fair, is not a negligent omission in writer-director-star Pietro Castellitto’s script, which tells us early on that Enea, the elder son of a wealthy Roman family, ostensibly manages a high-end sushi restaurant, atop an assortment of more underhand dealings.

As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieska Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its directors age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.

Jessica Kiang While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism. It is optimistic to expect and nurture of a reaction of potentially motivating outrage, when you portray the brutality of which human individuals, at the behest of human institutions, are capable. It is optimistic to believe that, faced with extraordinary cruelty, a viewer’s ordinary decency will be compelled to rise and rebel.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The mythology around Japan as a nation of everyday ghosts — where the living and the dead share space, occasionally in view of each other — can lead certain western filmmakers into dubious territory: If you don’t recall how Gus van Sant floundered with the mawkish, condescending exoticism of “The Sea of Trees,” trust that it’s best forgotten. Centered on a long-grieving Frenchwoman who finally makes peace with her husband’s death over the course of a Japanese work trip, “Sidonie in Japan” risks similar pitfalls — but Élise Girard’s droll, bittersweet romance mostly dodges them with grace and good humor, plus a pointed awareness of the limitations of its outsider perspective.

Christopher Vourlias Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland follows the harrowing ordeal of a refugee family trapped on the margins of the E.U. in “Green Border,” a gripping drama from the prolific Polish director that plays in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Damien Chazelle paid tribute to late great director William Friedkin on Sunday in a moving speech at the Venice Film Festival where Friedkin’s last film “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” premiered out-of-competition to warm applause. Friedkin, who died on Aug. 7 in Los Angeles at age 87, completed the film – which stars Kiefer Sutherland as Lt.