A Documentary Triumphs At Venezia 79

It's a documentary that snatched the Golden Lion at the 79th Venice Film Festival. Only for the second time in the festival's history the highest award was handed not to the feature film, and this time it was Laura Poitras' All The Beauty And The Bloodshed.

The Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras has proved that documentary is also cinema by creating an emotional story about internationally renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis.

The Silver Lion for Best Director went to Luca Guadagnino for his cannibal romance Bones And All starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, the latter also receiving the best young actress award for her excellent performance. "The movie is for me a meditation on who I am and how I can overcome what I feel, especially if it is something I cannot control in myself," Luca Guadagnino has told the public.

Copa Volpi for Best Actress was handed to Cate Blanchett starring in TÁR by Todd Field, and accordingly Colin Farrell was honored for his performance in The Banshees Of Inissherin by Martin McDonagh.

Meanwhile the Grand Jury's Prize, this year chaired by Julianne Moore and comprised of Mariano Cohn, Leonardo Di Costanzo, Audrey Diwan, Leila Hatami, Kazuo Ishiguro and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, went to Alice Diop's Saint Omer. According to the director: "Inspired by a true story, but fueled by an imagination that summoned mythological figures, I wrote this film: the story of a young novelist who attends the trial of an infanticidal mother with the aim of writing a contemporary version of the Medea myth. But nothing will happen as she had planned. The opacity of the accused will constantly return her to her own ambiguity about motherhood. It is a film that I wanted to make to probe the unspeakable mystery of mothers."