The Venice Film Festival honored the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, director of “Poor Creatures,” a kind of female Frankenstein. Fantastical and baroque, mostly in black and white, the film is both entertainment and a message about how norms weigh on women.
American star Emma Stone, who also produced the film, plays a sincere creature who undergoes sentimental and sexual education. The actress did not attend the Mostra due to the strike that paralyzed Hollywood.
The film and Bella Baxter, its protagonist, “an incredible creature, would not exist without Emma Stone, another incredible creature,” said Yorgos Lanthimos upon receiving his award.
political message
In an Italy dominated by the extreme right, the jury chaired by Damien Chazelle (“La-la-land”, “First Man”) also sent a political message by awarding several prizes to films that denounce the fate reserved for immigrants in Europe .
Great voice of Polish cinema, Agnieszka Holland received the special jury prize for “Green Border”, which shows the tragic fate of immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Africa, thrown between Poland and Belarus in 2021, prisoners of a diplomatic game that goes beyond. them.
The young Senegalese actor Seydou Sarr received the award for most promising actor for his role as a young migrant who crosses Africa and the Mediterranean, risking his life to reach Italy, in “Me, Captain” by Matteo Garrone, a film that also won the Lion. Silver for best direction.
The Hollywood Strike in the background
As for the performers, the Mostra distinguished two Americans: Cailee Spaeny, 25, for her first important role, that of the “King’s” wife, Priscilla Presley, in the biopic “Priscilla” by Sofia Coppola, and Peter Sarsgaard, who alongside Jessica Chastain, as a man suffering from dementia, in “Memoria” by Michel Franco.
Unlike many stars who star in big studio films and who were unable to travel to Venice in the middle of a strike, the two winners went on stage to receive their trophies.
Peter Sarsgaard took the opportunity to express his support for the strike and launch a tirade against artificial intelligence, for which screenwriters and actors demand supervision.
“If we lose this battle, our industry will be only the first of many others to fall,” he prophesied: medicine or the conduct of war could in turn be entrusted to artificial intelligence, which would “open the way to atrocities.”
The Mostra was the first international festival greatly affected by the historic confrontation with the studios, although some stars such as Adam Driver, Mads Mikkelsen and Jessica Chastain attended, each of them taking care to provide their support to the strikers.
Allen, Polanski… Controversial invitations
The festival was also at the center of criticism for having invited several filmmakers accused of sexist and sexual violence against women. Luc Besson, accused of rape before being definitively dismissed by French justice this year, was competing with “Dogman.” Woody Allen, excluded from the American film industry and who is not being prosecuted, presented his 50th film, “Coup de Chance”, out of competition, the first filmed in French.
Roman Polanski, who has been fleeing American justice for more than 40 years after being convicted of sexual relations with a minor, did not travel to Venice, where his latest film “The Palace”, also out of competition, received a cold reception. The director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, asked to distinguish the man from the artist.
Source: BFM TV
