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Venezuelan film wins Venice Golden Lion

Venezuelan drama “Desde Alla” (From Afar), which tells a story of repressed gay love, won the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday on a night to remember for Latin American cinema.

Venezuelan film wins Venice Golden Lion
Lorenzo Vigas celebrates his Silver Lion award. Photo: Tiziani Fabi/AFP

The debut feature by director Lorenzo Vigas was awarded the festival’s top prize by a jury chaired by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron from a selection of 21 productions from around the world.

 

The Silver Lion for best director went to Argentina’s Pablo Trapero for “The Clan”, a crime movie based on a real-life story of a prosperous family of kidnappers in Buenos Aires which has been a huge hit on home soil.

 

American duo Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson took the Grand Jury Prize for their acclaimed and highly original stop animation feature for adults “Anomalisa.”

 

“From Afar” centres on the life of Caracas resident Armando (Alfredo Castro), a prosperous middle-aged man who is sexually fascinated by young men but does not act on his desires beyond getting them to come to his home.

 

Things start to change after an encounter with Elder (Luis Silva), a teenager from a much rougher social milieu and an unexpected intimacy between the two leads to dark secrets in Armando’s past coming into the open.

 

Italy’s Valeria Golina won the best actress award for “Per amor vostro” (For Your Love), a Naples-set drama by Giuseppe Gaudino.

 

France’s Fabrice Luchini was named best actor for his role in Christian Vincent’s “L’Hermine”, which also won the best screenplay award in the main competition.

 

The Marcello Mastroianni best newcomer award went to Ghanaian Abraham Attah for his remarkable portrayal of a child soldier in “True Detective” director Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix production “Beasts of No Nation.”

 

But there was no recognition for “The Danish Girl”. The British production had been one of the pre-festival favourites and Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne has been heavily tipped for further recognition for his depiction of a transgender artist’s journey from being a man to becoming a woman in the early 1930s.

 

As well as showcasing the films in competition, this year’s festival hosted world premieres of three major Hollywood productions that will hope to be in the mix when Oscars time comes around next year.

 

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard arrive for a screening of “The Danish Girl”. Photo: Tiziani Fabi/AFP

 

They were “Everest”, a 3D drama based on a real-life disaster on the Himalayan peak, mobster saga “Black Mass” starring Johnny Depp, and Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight”, which recounts how the Boston Globe exposed the Catholic Church’s efforts to cover up the scale of clerical sex abuse in the US city.

 

That ensured stars including Jake Gyllenhaal (Everest), Mark Ruffalo and Stanley Tucci (Spotlight) were spotted on the red carpet, although they could scarcely compete with Depp, whose appearance resulted in hundreds of fans camping out overnight to catch a glimpse of him with new wife Amber Heard, here promoting “The Danish Girl” in which she has a supporting role.

 

Depp has been tipped as an Oscar contender for his role as Irish-American gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger in “Black Mass”, in which Australia’s Joel Edgerton also won rave reviews for his performance as an FBI agent who gets too close to Bulger.

 

American director Brady Corbet picked up two awards for his much-admired “Childhood of a Leader” — the Lion of the Future prize for a debut feature and best director in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the festival which provides a platform for world cinema.

 

The film, which stars Robert Pattinson, deals with the emergence of fascism in Europe through a fable-like story of the boyhood of a future dictator in the years following the end of World War One.

 

VENICE

Italy to pay €57m compensation over Venice cruise ship ban

The Italian government announced on Friday it would pay 57.5 million euros in compensation to cruise companies affected by the decision to ban large ships from Venice's fragile lagoon.

A cruise ship in St Mark's Basin, Venice.
The decision to limit cruise ship access to the Venice lagoon has come at a cost. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

The new rules, which took effect in August, followed years of warnings that the giant floating hotels risked causing irreparable damage to the lagoon city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

READ ALSO: Venice bans large cruise ships from centre after Unesco threat of ‘endangered’ status

Some 30 million euros has been allocated for 2021 for shipping companies who incurred costs in “rescheduling routes and refunding passengers who cancelled trips”, the infrastructure ministry said in a statement.

A further 27.5 million euros – five million this year and the rest in 2022 – was allocated for the terminal operator and related companies, it said.

The decision to ban large cruise ships from the centre of Venice in July came just days before a meeting of the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco, which had proposed adding Venice to a list of endangered heritage sites over inaction on cruise ships.

READ ALSO: Is Venice really banning cruise ships from its lagoon?

Under the government’s plan, cruise ships will not be banned from Venice altogether but the biggest vessels will no longer be able to pass through St Mark’s Basin, St Mark’s Canal or the Giudecca Canal. Instead, they’ll be diverted to the industrial port at Marghera.

But critics of the plan point out that Marghera – which is on the mainland, as opposed to the passenger terminal located in the islands – is still within the Venice lagoon.

Some aspects of the plan remain unclear, as infrastructure at Marghera is still being built. Meanwhile, smaller cruise liners are still allowed through St Mark’s and the Giudecca canals.

Cruise ships provide a huge economic boost to Venice, but activists and residents say the ships contribute to problems caused by ‘overtourism’ and cause large waves that undermine the city’s foundations and harm the fragile ecosystem of its lagoon.

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