Jim Jarmusch left the closing of the 82nd Venice Film Festival with a new souvenir tonight, having received the festival’s Golden Lion top honor for his new film Father Mother Sister Brother. Opening his acceptance speech with a slightly surprised “Oh shit,” Jarmusch thanked the festival’s jury for “appreciating our quiet film,” which stars an ensemble cast including Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, and Indya Moore, and centers on three stories of complicated family lives.
Jarmusch was possibly surprised by the honor because he, like many attendees at the festival, kind of thought Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice Of Hind Rajab had the award on lock. Ben Hania’s film—which blends actor portrayals of phone operators with real audio clips of a 6-year-old girl calling in to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, after her family was killed around her during the fighting in Gaza—provoked one of the longest sustained ovations in Venice’s clap-heavy history. But the film ultimately received the Silver Lion (a.k.a. the second-place Grand Jury prize),with Tunisian director Ben Hania on hand to “dedicate this award to the Palestinian Red Crescent and to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are real heroes.” Ben Hania finished his speech with a blunt call for international action: “The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself, a cry for rescue the entire world could hear, yet no one answered. Her voice will continue. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real, until justice is served.”
Elsewhere on the award slate, acting honors went to Tony Servillo for La Grazia, Paolo Sorrentino’s new drama about euthanasia, and Xin Zhilei for Cai Shangjun’s The Sun Rises On Us All. Valérie Donzelli (who also directed) and Gilles Marchand took home Best Screenplay for At Work, their adaptation of Franck Courtès’ novel; Luna Wedler won Best Young Actress for Silent Friend; the festival’s Armani Beauty Audience Award (handed out to the film that rates best among audiences from the competition’s Venice Spotlight section) went to Maryam Touzani’s Calle Málaga; and the Lion Of The Future award for best film debut was handed to Nastia Korkia’s coming-of-age drama Short Summer.
And also, somehow, Dwayne Johnson was there. The Rock himself didn’t pick up any awards at Venice this year, but his director did: Benny Safdie (rolling sans brother for once) ended up taking home a Silver Lion for Best Directing for his and Johnson’s MMA sports biopic The Smashing Machine. Safdie effusively praised Johnson, who stars as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in the film, in his acceptance speech, saying “Oh my God, Dwayne, my friend, my brother, my partner—‘shoulder and shoulder,’ that’s what we called it. I just want to thank you for diving in headfirst with a blindfold and X-ray vision. You truly performed with no net, and we jumped off the cliff together. We grew together, learned together.” Johnson is picking up quite a bit of genuine praise for his performance, which depicts Kerr’s descent into addiction to painkillers—while also noting that it’s a fairly different reception than he got the last time he attended a film festival, with the disastrous Cannes premiere of his infamous and strange Southland Tales back in 2006.
[via THR]
