American Director Wins in Venice
V E N I C E, Italy Sept. 9, 2000 -- The Circle, a dark Iranian movie about the oppression of women, won the Golden Lionaward for best film at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
The movie, directed by Jafar Panahi, emerged as a clearcritics’ favorite after its screening earlier this week.
It tells the story of the daily lives of eight women in acountry where they are not allowed to smoke in public, stay in ahotel on their own, or ride in a car driven by a man who isn’t a relative.
“Obviously the film met with a few problems as we weremaking it,” Panahi told a news conference after he accepted theprize. “It was born after a long labor and I wouldn’t want togo through it again. But I’m happy to have given birth to thisfilm.”
It starts in a delivery room, where the birth of a daughteris greeted with disappointment by relatives, and ends in prisonwhere the paths of the eight women finally cross.
“I got the idea for the film from a story in a newspaperabout a woman who killed her two daughters and then committedsuicide,” the director said this week.
“There was nothing about the reasons for the crime. Perhapsthe newspaper did not see the need … since the freedom of womenis so limited it seems as if they are in a big prison.”
The film was made with money from Italian and French backersand partly financed by Panahi himself.
Julian Schnabel Director Kudos U.S. painter and director Julian Schnabel took home the JuryGrand Prix for best director for Before Night Falls, a movietracking the life of gay Cuban novelist and poet ReinaldoArenas, a victim of Cuban censors.
“This is unbelievable for me, I’m speechless — and that’svery rare for me,” Schnabel joked as he accepted the award,wearing a sarong and a sports jacket over an open-necked shirt.
“I’m a painter, so it’s an honor for me to share the stagewith these great directors.”
The film, which will be released in the United States byyear’s end, also picked up the Volpi Cup for best male actingperformance for Spanish actor Javier Bardem’s intense portrayalof Arenas.
The Special Director’s Award went to Indian directorBuddhadeb Dasgupta for his film The Wrestlers, a lyricalportrayal of the devastating impact of violence on a small townin rural India.
Australian Rose Byrne won the award for best actress in theAustralian film The Goddess of 1967 by Clara Law. She plays ablind 17-year-old girl who leads a Japanese man on a strange anderotic journey through the Australian countryside in search ofthe seller of a 1967 Citroen.
Critics Favorite Snubbed French movie La Faute A Voltaire (It’s Voltaire’sFault), by Tunisian-born Abdel Kechiche, won the $100,000 prizefor best directorial debut for his tale of a Tunisian illegalimmigrant navigating the ins and outs of Paris.
Italy’s The Hundred Steps, a true story about a courageousanti-Mafia crusader in 1960s Sicily, won top prize for bestscript for a screenplay, written by director Marco TullioGiordana, Claudio Fava and Monica Zapelli.
Another critics’ favorite, Chinese director Jia Zhangke’sPlatform, went empty handed. The film is a sensitively relatedstory about rebellious youths growing up in China’s provinces inthe 1980s as popular culture began to seep into local life.
Some of the most popular films were screened outside themain competition, such as U.S. scriptwriter Kenneth Lonergan’sfirst feature film You Can Count on Me.
The world’s oldest film festival last week honored U.S.actor and director Clint Eastwood with a Golden Lion for careerachievement, and his latest film Space Cowboys kicked off thefestival on Aug. 30 with a star-studded European premiere.