Venice Festival: best films, awards and awards. Venice International Film Festival

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The Venice Film Festival is one of the oldest film festivals in the world, founded by Benito Mussolini, a well-known odious personality. But over the long years of its existence, from 1932 to the present day, the film festival has opened to the world not only American, French and German film directors, screenwriters, actors, but also Soviet, Japanese, Iranian cinema.

Venice is the City of Art

It is known that art has been shown in Venice since 1895. That year, the world's first exhibition of paintings, later called the Venice Biennale, was held there.

And since the thirties of the twentieth century, the festival began to show the achievements of theatrical and musical art. Thus, the Venice Festival brought together all the achievements of human art.

The festival used to be held on the Lido Island afterwinters, now film lovers come to the island in August-September. Many people remember that Mussolini himself and Count Giuseppe Volpi, who were members of the fascist organization, opened the international screening of films, but the Italians themselves are quite calm about this. This page of history has already been closed by spaghetti lovers.

Cannes and Rome Film Festivals

The Venice Film Festival served as the opening of two other film festivals. The famous Cannes, opened in 1939, and Rimsky, opened quite recently, only eleven years ago. The French moved to Cannes only because in those years at the Lido festival preference was given to German films. But the Rome Festival was created to protect Italian cinema from the invasion of American cinema.

Nevertheless, Americans still travel to Rome and Cannes with undisguised pleasure. And yet the Venice Film Festival is the first festival in terms of quality of awards and prestige, the second place is the Cannes Film Festival, and then all the others.

First Grand Prize

Interestingly, at the first film festival, the main prize was awarded to Nikolai Ekk's film "The Ticket to Life". This is a film about homeless children, filmed in the Soviet Union. And in 1935, the American film "Anna Karenina" with Greta Garbo in the title role won the prize at this festival. In 1951, the Venice Film Festival presented the main award - the "Golden Lion" - to the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa for the film "Rashomon".

Masters of Italian neorealismFellini, Visconti, Rossellini, Antonioni received well-deserved awards in Venice for the first time, and French masters - Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnay - gained popularity due to the fact that they came to the Venice International Art Festival.

Venice did not bypass Soviet art either. So, the film "Sadko" by Alexander Ptushko, as well as the film adaptation of Chekhov's "Jumping Girl" by Samson Samsonov received their "Silver Lions" in the middle of the last century.

Thanks to the Venice International Film Festival, the whole world learned about Andrei Tarkovsky, who won the Golden Lion for Ivan's Childhood.

Hard times for the festival

Besides the triumph, the festival also remembers the "black days" when it had to be closed twice. For the first time it happened during the Second World War, when there was no time for festivals, and the second time - in the late sixties. The Italian government decided to introduce its own rules into the competition programs, which ultimately led to the complete cancellation of the festival.

Venice Film Festival. Prize-winners for several years

It was revived only in 1979, and they did not cancel the rules that were before that. The rules of the Venice International Film Festival include strict conditions. Films from the main competition have no right to be shown at other festivals, the public must not see them anywhere. In 2010, this condition led to a scandal at the Russian film festival "Kinotavr - 2010", when the film "Oatmeal" was withdrawn from the competition forher participation at the festival in Venice.

The best films of the Venice Film Festival receive gold and silver lion awards. There is a Marcello Mastroianni prize for the best young actor or actress, the Volpi Cups are awarded for the best male role and the best female role, there is a special jury prize, and screenwriters and cameramen receive their awards.

In the entire history of the festival, three directors have won the Golden Lion twice. These are André Caillat, Louis Malle and Zhang Yimou. In addition to "Ivan's Childhood", the main prize was given to films by Russian directors - Nikita Mikhalkov (Urga) and "The Return" by Alexei Zvyagintsev.

Andrey Konchalovsky's film at the 2016 festival

Venice Festival Andrey Konchalovsky's film "Paradise", starring Russian, German and French actors, was appreciated. The picture received the "Silver Lion". It was surpassed by director Lav Diaz with his film The Woman Who Gone.

The jury included well-known directors and actors such as Gemma Arterton, Chiara Mastorianni, Vicky Zhaoni, Nina Hoss, Laurie Anderson and others. The 2016 film festival was hosted by director Sam Mendes. In addition to the Silver Winged Lion, Andrei Konchalovsky received other unofficial awards. The director said that he was interested in the inner world of the characters, how they themselves fight with good and evil and what wins.

For the first time, Andrei Konchalovsky got to the Venice International Film Festival in 1962 as a co-authorscript for Andrey Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. In 2014, he presented to the public at this film festival the film "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn", which completed the director's trilogy about the Russian hinterland. The painting received the "Silver Winged Lion". Known as the director of several blockbusters in Hollywood, Konchalovsky is always welcome and welcome in Venice.

To welcome him on the red carpet, the audience gathered two hours before the premiere. The film "Paradise" is an author's film shot in black and white and is similar in design to a documentary. Three actors - Julia Vysotskaya, who played a Russian aristocrat, German actor Christian Klaus, who played the role of an SS officer, and Frenchman Philippe Duquesne, who played collaborator Jules - keep the auditorium in suspense for almost two hours. After the premiere, the audience gave a standing ovation to everyone who created this film.

Other Venice Film Festival winners

Also, another director, Amat Escalante, won the Silver Lion for The Wilderness. The Best Actor award went to actor Oscar Martinez for his work in the film Famous Citizen, and the award for Best Actress went to the wonderful American actress Emma Stone, who played in the film La La Land.

Young actress Paula Bear received the Marcello Mastroianni Award for her acting debut in François Ozon's "Franz". There were many more official and unofficial prizes and awards.

The main thing is that the festival lives an active life and pleases us with new productsreal cinema.