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‘The Shape of Water’ by Mexico’s Guillermo Del Toro wins Venice Golden Lion

"The Shape of Water," a dazzling sci-fi romance by Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro, won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on Saturday.

'The Shape of Water' by Mexico's Guillermo Del Toro wins Venice Golden Lion
Director Guillermo Del Toro receives the Golden Lion for Best Film with the movie "The Shape of Water" during the award ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival on September 9, 2017 at Venice Lido. P
“If you remain pure and stay with your faith, with what you believe in — in my case, monsters — you can do anything,” Del Toro told the festival, the world's oldest, as he dedicated the award to young Latin American directors.
 
The quirky, other-worldly tale set in the Cold War era sees a mute cleaner (Britain's Sally Hawkins) in a high-security government laboratory stumble across a classified experiment that leads to an unlikely — and rather slimy — love affair.
 
 
Del Toro, the director behind such Gothic horrors as “The Devil's Backbone” (2001) and “Pan's Labyrinth” (2006), had described the flick as “an antidote to cynicism” and enchanted reviewers hailed it as his greatest work yet.
 
“I'm 52 years old, I weigh over 110 kilograms and I've done more than 10 movies,” he said as he held up his Lion. Even so, he said, this had not stopped him from “doing something different”.
 
“As a Mexican, I dedicate this award to all those Mexicans and Latin American directors dreaming of doing something as a parable, who are told it can't be done. It can be done.”
 
“I believe in life, in love and in cinema,” he added at the close of a ceremony heavy with emotion.
 
Tears and cocktails
 
French director Xavier Legrand snapped up two prizes, breaking down and sobbing openly as he was awarded the Silver Lion for best director hot on the tail of picking up the Lion of the Future for best debut film.
 
He said his divorce tale “Custody”, in which a child is held hostage to the escalating conflict between his parents, had been “a tale that urgently needed to be told” and a fierce denunciation of violence against women.
 
 
Best screenplay went to British-Irish Martin McDonagh for “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”, a dark comedy about a grieving mother who takes on the town's police chief when he fails to solve her daughter's murder.
 
“We've had a beautiful time (here in Venice), some beautiful pasta, some beautiful Negronis (cocktails), but this is the best part,” said McDonagh, who directed “In Bruges” (2008) and “Seven Psychopaths” (2012).
 
 
Britain's Charlotte Rampling won best actress for her role in Andrea Pallaoro's “Hannah”, and said it was a “huge honour” because Italy, where she did her first film in 1982, “is the source of absolutely all of my inspiration”.
 
Best actor went to Kamel El Basha in Ziad Doueiri's Lebanese film “The Insult”, a tale of a spat which escalates and lands a Lebanese Christian and Palestinian refugee in court. And Samuel Maoz's “Foxtrot”, a surreal, off-balance family tragedy in three acts described by the Israeli director as “a dance of a man with his fate”, snapped up the Grand Jury prize.  
 
For the first time, the festival included virtual reality films in the competition. The best VR award went to American Eugene YK Chung, with “Arden's Wake Expanded”.
 
By AFP's Catherine Marciano with Ella Ide in Rome
 

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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