Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language movie, The Room Next Door, which tackles the hefty themes of euthanasia and the climate crisis, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival on Saturday.
Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice earlier in the week – one of the longest in recent memory.
Almodóvar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, irreverent and often funny Spanish-language features.
He also won an Oscar in the best foreign language category for his 1999 film All About My Mother.
Now 74, he has decided to try his hand at film-making in English, telling reporters that it was like science fiction for him.
Speaking before the premiere, he said his movie highlighted the importance of cherishing life, but also made clear that people should be able to die with dignity at a time of their choosing.
“It’s a film in favour of euthanasia,” he said, criticising countries such as the US, where so-called “mercy killing” is illegal, unlike in his native Spain.
While The Room Next Door had been widely tipped to win, the runner-up Silver Lion award was a surprise, going to Italian director Maura Delpero for Vermiglio, her slow-paced drama set in the Italian Alps during the second world war.
Australia’s Nicole Kidman won the best actress award for her risque role in the erotic Babygirl, where she plays a hard-nosed CEO who jeopardises her career and her family by having a toxic affair with a young, manipulative intern.
Kidman was in Venice on Saturday, but did not attend the awards ceremony after learning that her mother had died unexpectedly.
France’s Vincent Lindon was named best actor for The Quiet Son, a topical French-language drama about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.
The best director award went to the American film-maker Brady Corbet for his three-and-a-half-hour-long movie The Brutalist, the epic tale of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the US.
The festival marks the start of the awards season and regularly throws up big favourites for the Oscars, with eight of the past 12 best director awards at the Oscars going to films that debuted at Venice.
The prize for best screenplay went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for I’m Still Here, a film about Brazil’s military dictatorship, while the special jury award went to the abortion drama April, by the Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili.
Among the movies that left Venice’s Lido island empty-handed were Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, the sequel to his original The Joker, which claimed the top prize in Venice in 2019.
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Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano, also won plaudits from the critics but did not get any awards.
The Venice jury this year was headed by the French actor Isabelle Huppert.
Main award winners
Golden Lion for best picture The Room Next Door
Silver Lion (runner-up prize) Vermiglio
Best director Brady Corbet for The Brutalist
Best actressNicole Kidman for Babygirl
Best actor Vincent Lindon for The Quiet Son
Best screenplay Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for I’m Still Here
Special jury award April by Dea Kulumbegashvili
Best young actor Paul Kircher for And Their Children After Them