Venice film festival: Irish-produced Poor Things wins top Golden Lion award

Yorgos Lanthimos’s antic feminist comedy Poor Things, produced by the Irish company Element Pictures, has won the Golden Lion, top prize, at an unusual 80th Venice International Film Festival. Also qualifying as a UK and American production, the film becomes, after Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins and Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters, the third Irish title to take this most prestigious of awards.

Adapted from a novel by the late Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, the picture stars Emma Stone as a woman who, after taking her own life, has the brain of her undead child transplanted into her skull. Poor Things was greeted with yells of approval at its premiere last weekend and received unbroken raves from attending critics. “It is rare that something so thoughtful offers an audience such a good time,” The Irish Times noted.

This marks the fourth collaboration between Element Pictures and the Greek director (with a fifth already in the can) after The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite. Experienced Irish professionals Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe are credited as producers alongside the director and Stone.

“Thank you to the jury. I know it’s a hard job,” Lanthimos said from the podium. “Thank you to the festival that very enthusiastically invited the film early on. And to Ed and Andrew from Element Pictures. To the crew that worked on the film. Everybody that worked on the film. It took us quite a few years to get it made – until the world or our industry was ready for this film.”

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Following the ecstatic response, Poor Things, despite its gleeful weirdness, now looks likely to accumulate multiple nominations at the upcoming Academy Awards. The Golden Lion is, after the Palme d’Or at Cannes, comfortably the second-most important festival prize in world cinema. Previous winners have included Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.

“Andrew and I are so proud of Poor Things and of our amazing cast and crew and the wonderful team at Element,” Ed Guiney, an Oscar nominee for The Favourite and Room, told The Irish Times. “And above all we are in awe of the incredible, incomparable Yorgos Lanthimos and of our utterly brilliant star and producing partner, Emma Stone.”

Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a searing sociopolitical drama, was a popular winner of the Special Jury Prize. The film concerns the desperate plight of mistreated Middle Eastern and African refugees making their way through Belarus to Holland’s native Poland via the Białowieża Forest. Holland, veteran Polish director, delivered an impassioned speech from the podium. “About 60,000 people died trying to reach Europe,” she said. “The situation from my film is still going on. People are still hiding in forests.”

Emigration proved a theme at this year’s event. Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano, winner of the Silver Lion, follows a young Senegalese man as he makes his way from West Africa towards a hoped new life in Europe. Garrone is one of the home country’s most celebrated directors. Seydou Sarr, star of the film, seemed overwhelmed as he accepted the Marcello Mastroianni Award for the most notable emerging performer.

Many thought that award might go the way of Cailee Spaeny, a promising young Missourian actor, who gave a beautifully intricate performance as Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s dreamy Priscilla, but, in the event, she beat out more experienced actors such as Emma Stone and Carey Mulligan to take best actress. Spaeny seemed remarkably confident at the podium as she paid tribute to the film’s inspiration.

“Most of all, I want to say this,” she said. “Priscilla trusted me with something truly complex, subtle, difficult and personal. And I was overwhelmed by the responsibility in trying to honour this delicate section of her life. I have such gratitude to her and also such respect for her honesty.”

This year’s festival will be remembered for the effects of the Hollywood actors’ strike and controversies surrounding two out-of-competition titles. The casts of such high-profile US titles as David Fincher’s The Killer, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar all stayed home. Poor Things stars such as Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley and Stone were also deprived of their spell on the red carpet.

Peter Sarsgaard, who won best actor for his performance in Michel Franco’s Memory, addressed the strike in a lengthy, impassioned acceptance speech. “So all of the issues regarding fair pay are important,” he said. “But the issue that’s really struck a chord with me is AI – artificial intelligence. And it’s hard to prioritise it as it really does seem the stuff of science fiction. But I think we could all really agree that an actor is a person, and the writer is a person. But it seems that we can’t.”

Elsewhere, there were objections to the inclusion of Roman Polanski’s The Palace and Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance in the official selection. Polanski, who pleaded guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” in 1977, was not in attendance, but Allen, accused of abusing his adopted daughter, triggered contrasting responses when he appeared. Protesters handed out documents urging the festival to “turn the spotlight off of rapists.” But Allen’s name was applauded at the morning press screening and, at the later premiere, he received a standing ovation both before and after the film. Coup de Chance went on to garner the director’s best reviews in some years.

Despite the actors’ strike, Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, will see the 80th edition as a success. A popular winner. Big crowds. That sound was the starting pistol for the long, long race to the Oscars. Alas, Irish audiences will not see Poor Things until January.

Awards of the 80th Venice International Film Festival

• Golden Lion: Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos
• Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize
Evil: Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
• Silver Lion Best Director:
Matteo Garrone, Io Capitano
• Special Jury Prize:
Green Border, Agnieszka Holland
• Best Screenplay:
Pablo Larrain and Guillermo Calderón, El Conde
• Best Actress:
Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
• Best Actor: Peter Sarsgaard, Memory
• Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress:
Seydou Sarr, Io Capitano