Italy, women, cinema of reality and grotesque drama win at the 7 9th Venice International Film Festival , where the only documentary in competition, "All the beauty and the bloodshed" , gets the Golden Lion by director Laura Poitras , the story of photographer Nan Goldin and her militant struggle against Purdue Pharma's Sackler family.
But the Italy that speaks English also wins , namely that of Luca Guadagnino with "Bones and all", a cannibal-identity coming age, which takes home two prizes: the Silver Lion for best direction and the Marcello award Mastroianni went to actress Taylor Russell.
Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize, second in importance, went to “Saint Omer” again signed by a female director, Alice Diop , who also won the Lion of the Future - Venice First Feature "Luigi De Laurentiis" award. An all-female story with the story of a true fact that shocked France in 2016 when a Senegalese woman was accused of killing her fifteen-month-old daughter, abandoning her on a beach in northern France.
For "Bears don't exist" by Jafar Panahi , he denounces the Iranian regime without too many discounts and is considered by all to be the film to beat, the special prize of the jury, certainly an important recognition but perhaps not enough to give a strong signal to the Iran that holds Panahi prisoner for artistic reasons.
Apart from that, Guadagnino is a more than deserved double for "The spirits of the island" by Martin McDonagh (the director of "Three posters in Ebbing, Missouri") grotesque and allegorical comedy noir with the extraordinary duet between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, former friends , but now fighting each other for futile reasons but which will not fail to lead to extreme violence (not surprisingly in the background the Civil War of 1923). For the film, which at times looks like a western, Colin Farrel was also awarded the Coppa Volpi.
