Vita Gazette – The first prize of the 80th Venice Film Festival was won by the film “Poor Things” by Yorgo Lanthimos. The Best Actress award went to Cailee Spaeny for “Priscilla” and Peter Sarsgaard as Best Actor for his role in “Memory.” Silver Lion for “Evil does not exist” by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

The Venice Film Festival, one of the most prestigious festivals in world cinema, began on 30 August and ended with an awards ceremony. The jury, chaired by director Damien Chazelle and composed of Saleh Bakri, Jane Campion, Mia Hansen-Løve, Gabriele Mainetti, Martin McDonagh, Santiago Mitre, Laura Poitras and Shu Qi, won the Golden Lion Grand Prize for Yorgo all 80th Venice Film Festival and gave it to Lanthimos’ film “Poveri Cose”. Described by many critics as the “film of the year,” “Poor Things” received an 8-minute standing ovation the day it screened at the festival. While the Silver Lion went to “Evil Does Not Exist” by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the award for best director went to Matteo Garrone with “Io Capitano”. At the festival, the best actress award went to Cailee Spaeny for her role in the film “Priscilla”, while the best actor award went to Peter Sarsgaard for his role in “Memory”. “Best Screenplay” went to “El Conde”. The Special Jury Prize went to the movie “Green Border” by Agnieszka Holland.

The other winners of the evening

Poor Creatures! (Poor Things) by Greek director, Yorgos Lanthimos is the winner of the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. The black and white film starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe, among others, is the film adaptation of the 1992 novel of the same name written by Alasdair Gray (Safarà Editore) focusing on Bella Baxter, a sort of feminist Frankenstein ante litteram.

Evil Does Not Exist by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is the Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize winner at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. The award went to a drama which, through the small story of Takumi and his daughter Hana, who live in the village of Mizubiki, near Tokyo, where a group of investors would like to build a luxury glamping site, focuses on the need to respect Nature and find a balance with it.

Matteo Garrone for Io Capitano is the winner of the Silver Lion – award for best director at the Venice Film Festival 2023. The film is the moving, dramatic and poetic contemporary Odyssey of two young people from Dakar in Senegal who decide to face the dangers of the sub-Saharan desert, the torture in Libya, and the dangerous journey in a boat full of migrants to arrive in the promised land: Italy. Seydou and Moussa are the two protagonists, debuting actors.

Green Border (Zielona Granica) by Agnieszka Holland is the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Like a documentary, the film tells in black and white what happens on the border between Poland and Belarus, where Syrian migrants and Africans are bounced back at the borders, with their human rights trampled upon.