Venice International Film Festival 2008
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The 65th Venice International Film Festival ( 65th Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica ) took place from August 27 to September 6, 2008. 3,689 films from 72 countries applied to participate in the festival, which is one of the three most important A festivals worldwide. In the most important section, the competition, 21 feature films competed for the Golden Lion , the main prize of the festival. The award finally went to the American film production company The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky .
The festival opened with Do visìvel ao invisìvel , a seven-minute drama by Manoel de Oliveira , which in turn was followed by the American film Burn After Reading by Ethan and Joel Coen . Russian actress Xenia Rappoport moderated the opening and closing ceremonies.
Festival director Marco Müller, who described the event for this year as “pluralistic and therefore deliberately contradictory” , dedicated the festival to the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine , who died in 2008 . A retrospective showed Italian films from 1946 to 1975, including many from the Italian Neorealism movement .
On September 5, 2008, the Italian Ermanno Olmi was awarded the Golden Lion for his life's work. The 77-year-old director won the Venice competition in 1988 with his literary adaptation The Legend of the Holy Drinker .
competition
jury
This year's jury president was the German director Wim Wenders , who had been awarded the Golden Lion in 1982 for the film Der Stand der Dinge .
He was supported by five other jury members
- John Landis , American film director
- Lucrecia Martel , Argentine film director
- Johnnie To , Hong Kong film director
- Yuri Arabov , Russian screenwriter
- Valeria Golino , Italian actress ( actor award in Venice 1986)
Movies
21 feature films were shown in the competition, most of them world premieres. Five of the films were made in the United States and four were from Italy.
Although German co-productions have been regularly represented in recent years, German-language films have appeared less and less in the main competition, the last time in 2003 with Margarethe von Trottas Rosenstrasse and in 2006 with Barbara Alberts Fallen . In 2008 the German director Christian Petzold and Jerichow competed for the Golden Lion, while the German opera director Werner Schroeter was represented in the competition with the French-language Die Nacht .
The Greek director Theo Angelopoulos had also planned to present his new film Dust of Time with Bruno Ganz in the lead role in Venice, but this had failed in advance due to disputes about the performance date.
Hayao Miyazaki's socially critical cartoon Gake no Ue no Ponyo about a goldfish who becomes human and befriends a little boy, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker about the Iraq War and Jonathan Demme's family drama Rachel Getting Married were considered favorites during the festival .
Award winners
- Golden Lion : The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky
- Grand Jury Prize: Morgentau (Teza) by Haile Gerima
- Silver Lion - Best Director: Bumaschny soldat by Alexei German
- Coppa Volpi - Best Actor: Silvio Orlando for Il papà di Giovanna
- Coppa Volpi - Best Actress: Dominique Blanc for L'Autre
- Marcello Mastroianni Prize - Best Young Actress: Jennifer Lawrence for The Burning Plain
- Special lion: Ermanno Olmi for his complete works
- Special prize of the jury: Werner Schroeter for his “innovative, uncompromising and often provocative” work
- FIPRESCI Prize : Gabbla by Tariq Teguia
Jury President Wim Wenders wanted to bequeath Mickey Rourke the award for best actor for his performance in The Wrestler , but could not do so because of the festival's regulations. Wenders asked the festival management to reconsider this.
Orizzonti
The Orizzonti (German: “Horizons”) section, which is dedicated to “new paths and possibilities” in film and primarily wants to advertise unconventional films, showed 18 feature-length films and two other films, which were not called “surprise films” until the festival were announced ( Khastegi and Wanmei Shenhuo ).
The Belgian director Chantal Akerman chaired the international jury . Other jury members were:
- Nicole Brenez , French film critic
- Barbara Cupisti , Italian actress
- José Luis Guerin , Spanish director
- Veiko Õunpuu , Estonian director
As every year, prizes were awarded in the two competition sections feature films and documentaries . The main prizes went to the feature film Melancholia by the Filipino director Lav Diaz and the documentary Below Sea Level by Gianfranco Rosi . Special mentions were given to Un lac by Philippe Grandieux and Wo men by Huang Wenhai .
Seven other documentaries were also screened as Eventi Orizzonti and as not participating in the competition, most of them Italian.
Feature films
| Movie title | Director | Country of production |
|---|---|---|
| A Erva do Rato | Julio Bressane , Rosa Dias | Brazil |
| Dikoe Pole | Mikheil Kalatosishvili | Russia |
| Goodbye solo | Ramin Bahrani | United States |
| Jay | Francis Xavier Pasion | Philippines |
| Khastegi | Bahman Motamedian | Iran |
| Un lac | Philippe Grandrieux | France |
| Melancholia | Lav Diaz | Philippines |
| Pa-ra-da | Marco Pontecorvo | Italy, France, Romania |
| Parc | Arnaud des Pallières | France |
| Il primo giorno d'inverno | Mirko Locatelli | Italy |
| Voy a explotar | Gerardo Naranjo | Mexico |
| Wanmei Shenhuo | Emily Tang | People's Republic of China, Hong Kong |
| Zero Bridge | Tariq tapa | India, United States |
Documentaries
| Movie title | Director | Country of production |
|---|---|---|
| Below Sea Level | Gianfranco Rosi | Italy, United States |
| L'Exil et le royaume | Andreï Schtakleff , Jonathan Le Fourn | France |
| Los Herederos | Eugenio Polgovsky | Mexico |
| In Paraguay | Ross McElwee | United States |
| Puisque nous sommes nés | Jean-Pierre Duret , Andréa Santana | France, Brazil |
| Where men | Huang Wenhai | People's Republic of China, Switzerland |
| Z32 | Avi Mograbi | Israel, France |
Corto Cortissimo
In the Corto Cortissimo series , 18 short films with a length of less than 30 minutes were shown. As Eventi , in addition to the films participating in the competition for awards, shown further six short films, including Eve of US actress Natalie Portman , who hereby presented her directorial debut. Lauren Bacall plays a leading role in the film .
A jury chaired by American director Amos Poe , who worked here with producer Joana Vicente and Italian critic Gianni Rondolino , decided on the prizes in the section . The Mexican film Tierra y Pan by Carlos Armella won the Golden Lion for best short film . The reason given by the jury was: "In just a few minutes and in a single room, the author managed to tell a dramatic story about misery and loneliness, exploring the narrative potential of cinematographic images to the utmost."
A special mention was given to Vacsora by Karchi Perlmann and the Belgian short film De Onbaatzunchtigen by Koen Dejaegher was awarded the Prix UIP as the best European film in the Corto Cortissimo competition. Koen Dejaegher's film has thus been nominated for the European Film Award as “best short film”.
| Movie title | Director | Country of production | length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1937 | Giacomo Gatti , Francesco Carrozzini | United States, France, Italy | 24 minutes |
| The Butcher's Shop | Philip Haas | United States | 7 minutes |
| Corpus / corpus | Christophe Loizillon | France | 26 minutes |
| Dix | BIF | France, UK | 14 minutes |
| Every Breath You Take | Igor Šterk | Slovenia | 10 mins |
| I'm In Away From Here | Catriona MacInnes | United Kingdom | 22 minutes |
| I don't dream in German | Ivana Lalovic | Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina | 15 minutes |
| Khi toi 20 | Dang Di Phan | Vietnam | 20 minutes |
| Lögner | Jonas Odell | Sweden | 13 minutes |
| Noces de cendre | Pierre Eden Simon | Belgium | 13 minutes |
| De onbaatzuchtigen | Koen Dejaegher | Belgium | 14 minutes |
| The Stars Don't Twinkle In Outer Space | Peter Thwaites | United Kingdom | 10 mins |
| Nice tulemine | Tanel Toom | Estonia | 27 minutes |
| Tierra y Pan | Carlos Armella | Mexico | 8 minutes |
| Vacsora | Karchi Perlmann | Hungary | 26 minutes |
| Vi the blev tilbage | Martin de Thurah | Denmark | 25 minutes |
| Wode | Liu Hui | People's Republic of China | 29 minutes |
| Zand | Joost Van Ginkel | Netherlands | 20 minutes |
Films out of competition
As every year, in 2008 numerous films were shown outside of the competition categories. Some well-known filmmakers present their works to the public in this way: the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami showed the film Shirin , Ethan and Joel Coen were represented with Burn After Reading and Claire Denis published her current work with 35 rhums .
Web links
- Official website (English and Italian)
- Press review of the 2008 film festival on film-zeit.de (German)
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Venezia 65: Leone d'oro a 'The Wrestler' on lastampa.it, September 6, 2008
- ↑ Nick Vivarelli: Rappoport to host Venice fest , Variety, August 13, 2008
- ↑ a b Petzold wants the "Golden Lion" ( Memento from November 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) , Netzeitung, July 29, 2008
- ↑ cf. Olmi wins lifetime award at Venice film festival . Associated Press on Sep 5, 2008 at 8:42 PM GMT
- ^ A b Peter Zander: "The Wrestler" wins the Golden Lion in Venice , Welt Online, September 6, 2008
- ↑ Golden Lion for Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" , Der Standard, September 6, 2008
- ↑ labiennale.org ( Memento of the original from September 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
