25/08/2024
Award Winners of Venice Film Week 2024 Announced!
The Venice Film Week team would like to thank all of their guests for coming out to enjoy our selection of new independent cinema from around the globe at the 9th edition of the festival, which included a special open air screening at Campo San Polo.
This year, the festival was privileged to receive almost two thousand entries. 39 wonderful films made it to the final selection for 2024. The Venice Film Week is pleased to announce to you today the following films as its award winners for 2024, as chosen by this year's jury members:
Best Narrative Feature Film:
Coexistence (Dominican Republic) by José Gómez De Vargas
Jose Gomez De Vargas’ Coexistence unfolds in a crime-ridden neighborhood of the Dominican Republic, where an aging writer has been murdered in cold blood, shot inside his apartment. We are introduced to an ensemble cast of seven suspects: an adulterous banker (Francis Cruz) and his wife (Ruth Emeterio), a promiscuous realtor (Pachy Méndez), a doctor (Roger Wasserman), an intrusive elderly woman (Niurka Mota), a young hairdresser (Karina Valdez), and their surly landlord (Gerardo Mercedes). Looming over the group is the officer in charge (Mario Nunez), who has detained them in a bleak, concrete room until the suspect is identified.
The film keeps the audience guessing the whole way through, letting you put together pieces of the puzzle alongside the characters. It evokes inspiration from the likes of Lumet and Preminger. An old-school thriller with modern sensibilities, Coexistence is a tense, effective whodunnit that pulls off an impressive feat: a courtroom drama without the courtroom
Best Documentary Feature Film:
The Lost Shoes (Italy) by Tomaso Aramini, Rafiqfuad Yarahmadi
The Lost Shoes is a markedly personal documentary chronicling the life of Armando Lanza, a man who spent decades amongst Italy’s radical left. Armando tells us he began writing his story when his daughter was 10, after being asked “Have you ever been to prison?” From there, the audience is walked through a fascinating portrait of a remarkably complex life devoted to radical change. Through contemporary interviews, archival footage, and reenactments, we accompany Armando chronologically as he visits the different people and places who defined his life both personally and politically.
Though the film is a decidedly personal story, it is cleverly framed within a broad, global context. As Armando navigates his way through Italy’s leftist movements in universities, labor groups, and beyond, we also hear and see parallel movements exploding across the globe; anti-Vietnam protests in the United States are a mirror image of those in Italy. Thus, we see different people, in different places, all with the same goal in mind: change without compromise.
The film’s ostensible climax comes when Armando, now a member of the Marxist guerilla group The Red Brigades, is arrested for the kidnapping of American NATO general James L. Dozier. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the film is how it doesn’t cast judgment on these events, allowing the audience to decide for themselves how to feel. Ultimately, The Lost Shoes chronicles a man not only proud of his past but who is ready and willing to continue fighting for what he believes, with a profound recognition that his fight is far from over.
Best Narrative Short Film:
The Feast (Georgia) by Mariam Bitsadze
The Feast is a truly thought-provoking exploration of societal expectations and of reassessing one’s station in life. The film opens with a Georgian housewife preparing for visitors. She pours her heart and soul into preparing a delicious meal; we see her shopping at a lively outdoor market, preparing the food, setting the table, and finally welcoming her husband’s friends into their home.
Crammed around an overflowing dining room table, the old friends gossip, laugh, and reminisce. However, as the night progresses, the wife fades into the background. There soon comes a quiet realization, by both protagonist and audience, that she does not share in the old friends’ mutual bond. The film’s message is punctuated beautifully in its closing moments. With his friends gone the husband sits, practically comatose, in front of the television; gone are the joyous sounds of laughter and shared experience. Then, in the closing shot of the wife, we witness a woman finally rethinking her purpose not just in the household, but in life.
Best Documentary Short Film:
Leaving Chouchou (France) by Lucie Demange
In this touching documentary, we follow a young woman, Lucie, as she visits her mother’s house for the holidays. The film opens with a powerful scene that sets the stage for the following 30 minutes, in which the mother and daughter scroll through old photos of Lucie. Their opposing reactions say it all; Lucie is not the feminine woman her mother had hoped for.
Following the pair intimately for a few days, we watch as Lucie attempts to maintain confidence in herself. Conversely, the mother contends with casting aside her preconceived notions and finally accepting Lucie for who she is: her child. In the film’s beautiful closing moments, we see Lucie finally sing to her mother what she hadn’t been able to say. In the end, Leaving Chouchou powerfully champions the disregard of sociocultural biases in favor of love, affection, and family.
Best Animated Film:
Tennis, Oranges (United States) by Sean Pecknold
Gorgeous stop-motion animation depicts a robotic vacuum quitting its job and cruising through a tiny, quiet corner in Chinatown. Stumbling upon two rabbits stuck in a time loop, the robot returns some excitement to their lives. The film applies the motif of circularity both visually and thematically. We watch as the characters bounce in and out of each other’s life cycles, acting like kinetic energy spurring each other onward. Tennis, Oranges is a quirky, charming portrayal of boredom, repetition, and the importance of external forces to keep us moving.
Best Experimental Film:
Reep (United States) by Jakub Blank
Reep depicts a young man in the rural American South preparing for a disturbing ritual. The film is a masterclass in building tension, establishing an underlying tone that permeates throughout the runtime. The protagonist delivers dialogue through blank, staccato passages, his speech exhibiting a unique, unsettling vacancy. Similarly, the black-and-white cinematography lingers on its subject for uncomfortably long. The camera also pays close attention to its setting: the idyllic American countryside. As the man drives through fertile farmland, we hear Christian radio playing and see a crucifix dangle from the rearview mirror. Later, as he sits at his kitchen table and cuts a slice of bread, he does so with ritualistic precision, like a minister consecrating the Eucharist.
The film concludes with an abrasive, disturbing assault to the senses, playing in stark, powerful contrast to the previous twenty minutes of hushed, muted tension. This makes Reep a fascinating exercise in dissonance, repressed transgression, and depravity bursting free from a pious veneer.
Best Music Video:
The Lovers Of Avignon (Spain) by Manuel Fernández Ferro
We see images of two figures, a woman and a man. The former is made up of purple and blue hues, the other shades of red. An anxious, booming soundtrack sounds as the figures become warped and distorted, before finally coming together, caressing one another. An exercise in bringing two-dimensional images to life, The Lovers of Avignon utilizes cubism as a visible and audible representation of breaking free from emotional dissonance.
Best Italian Cinema Now:
Safari (Italy) by Leonardo Balestrieri
A group of Italian youths are depicted luring LGBT+ people into violent traps, brutally assaulting them in desolate fields and dark street corners. Underneath this dark, violent exterior, the film reveals the inner turmoil of one of the assailants. We start to understand how and why he followed this dark path. We see the lengths people will go to hide who they truly are, living a lie that harms not only themselves but others too. Crucially, the subject is tackled in a manner that doesn’t absolve him of his actions but rather seeks to explain the how and the why.
Safari is both a disturbing and enlightening look at how societal prejudices and taboos can foster hatred. It provokes the viewer to ask important questions about why people engage in transgressive behavior and what outside factors can drive them into that depraved frame of mind.
Congratulations to all!
