Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” a black-and-white drama drawn from the director’s memories of growing up in Mexico City in the early 1970s, won the Venice Film festival’s Golden Lion on Saturday.
The film took the top prize among 21 entries. It is centered on two domestic workers, both from Mixteco heritage, who tirelessly take care of a small family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma, Variety reported.
“The Favorite,” Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s darkly comic period English-language piece, took home two awards, the Grand Jury Prize, the fest’s second-most prestigious prize, and also the Volpi Cup for Best Actress which went to Olivia Colman for her hilarious, and also moving, performance as ailing 18th century Queen Anne, a dysfunctional monarch who suffers from gout and only occasionally rises out of her four-poster bed to go around her palace by wheelchair.
Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale,” which was the sole title in the competition directed by a woman, also won two awards. The revenge thriller received the Special Jury Prize and also the Marcello Mastroianni nod for best young actor which went to Baykali Ganambarr.
In this sometimes violent film set in 19th century Tasmania a 21-year-old Irish convict woman and an Aboriginal tracker (played by Ganambarr) pursue the British army officer who wronged her family.
French director Jacques Audiard took best director for his witty English-language Western “The Sisters Brothers” starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly as sibling hitmen.
The Volpi Cup for the Best Actor went to Willem Dafoe for his tour-de-force performance as Vincent Van Gogh during the artist’s artistically illuminated but mentally dark final period in Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate.”
Joel and Ethan Coen won best screenplay for their western “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”.
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