2023-09-09 20:38:37
The film “Poor Things” by Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice Film Festival. The Italian Matteo Garrone was honored as best director on Saturday evening for his film “Io Capitano”. The best actor trophies went to US actress Cailee Spaeny in “Prisciilla” and US actor Peter Sarsgaard in “Memory”.
Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi received the Grand Jury Prize for his film “Evil Does Not Exist” (Japanese: “Aku wa sonzai shinai”). Its chairman was the American director Damien Chazelle. The Venice Film Festival, which began on August 30th, is one of the three most important in the world, alongside the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlinale. In this year’s competition, 23 works competed for the prizes.
“Poor Things” is an experimental variation on the Frankenstein story starring US actress Emma Stone. Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo also play other roles – and German actress Hanna Schygulla can also be seen briefly.
At the awards ceremony, Lanthimos particularly praised his leading actress. “This film is, above all, the main character, Bella Baxter, this incredible creature, and she wouldn’t exist without Emma Stone, another incredible creature,” the 50-year-old said on Saturday. “She is the film, in front of and behind the camera.” Stone (34), like the rest of the cast of “Poor Things,” did not travel to the Venice Film Festival because of the Hollywood strike.
The 50-year-old director Lanthimos is known for films such as “The Favorite”, “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”. In the grotesque fairy tale “Poor Things,” Stone plays a pregnant woman who kills herself to escape her husband’s abuse. The scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) finds her corpse, inserts the brain of her unborn child into it and revives her. She is now called Bella and has the mental age of a child, but is constantly developing.
The audience follows Bella as she learns to move and speak. Eventually she escapes from the confines of Baxter’s house and gets to know life on her travels. Those around her are both irritated and fascinated by her unprejudiced and sexually permissive nature.
In Greece, the news of the prize for “Poor Things” caused a storm of enthusiasm. “Lanthimos has proven with his talent that Greek cinema and its creators can stand on an equal footing on the international map of the film industry,” said the Greek Film Center (HCC), which is responsible for promoting cinema in Greece, on Saturday evening. “Big award for the Greek director in Venice” was the almost identical headline on all Greek news portals on Saturday evening. The largest Sunday newspaper “To Vima” said: “And this is the first step towards a brilliant future for film, everything points to the film being nominated for an Oscar.” The Athens news portal “Protothema.gr” headlined: “Triumph in Venice”.
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