Films from Latin America bagged double top honours at the 72nd Venice Film Festival on Saturday, with Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas getting the Golden Lion best film award for Desde Alla (From Afar).
The film was about a murky homosexual affair between a tough street hustler and a successful businessman. Being Vigas’s first feature film, he dedicated the award to his country.
“This is a bit of a surprise but I know it’s going to be very well received in the country where we’ve had some problems in the last few years. I hope it is going to help,” said Vigas as he accepted the Golden Lion on the stage of the main festival cinema.
He added that he hoped his film’s victory might be a clarion call for greater co-operation among the region’s film makers. “I think that this is something we should do in South America,” he added.
The best director award went to Argentina’s Pablo Trapero for El Clan (The Clan), which portrayed the real-life Puccio family of kidnappers who operated in Buenos Aires during the 1980s.
The runner-up grand jury prize went to American director Charlie Kaufman and co-director Duke Johnson for stop-motion animation Anomalisa, which uses puppets instead of drawings.
French actor Fabrice Luchini won the best actor prize for his role as a judge in L’Hermine (Courted) and Italy’s Valeria Golino took the best actress prize as a woman married to a Naples loan shark in Per Amor Vostro (For Your Love).
Turkish film Abluka (Frenzy) won the Special Jury Prize and L’Hermine also received the prize for the best screenplay.
Film specialists noted that the jury was headed by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, whose Gravity opened the Venice festival two years ago, and suggested the awards might have reflected his support for films from his region of the world.