The 79th edition of the Venice film festival is over. This morning, just as the sun was coming up, around the Lido’s promenade the few remaining festival attendants were dragging themselves back from the after-gala parties. With great relief for the photographers as well as the screaming fans and of course the impeccably dressed guests, the rain didn’t hit the red carpet until the end.
The winner of this year’s Golden Lion is Laura Poitres with All the Beauty and Bloodshed. This is the second documentary in the film festival history to win the top prize. The life and career of photographer and activist Nan Goldin is presented by showing her commitment to fighting the pharma company accountable for the opioid epidemic in the US. The Silver Lion for Best Director went to Luca Guadagnino for Bones and All, whose leading actress Taylor Russel won the prize for the best young actress. While Colin Farrell and Cate Blanchett won the award for Best performer. The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to Alice Diop, who also won the award for best debut feature with Saint Omer. The pro-freedom movie No Bears by the recently imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, won the jury special prize.
While the public will almost certainly have the chance to watch the winning movies all around the globe, many other festival highlights will not easily find a distributor. Therefore, here are a few words about The Matchmaker by Benedetta Argentieri and Luxembourg, Luxembourg by Antonio Lukich. Two hidden gems of this year’s festival edition are at risk of getting lost in the intricate mechanisms of the mainstream film industry. But deserve a closer look.
The Matchmaker by Benedetta Argentieri
Al Hol, North-East Syria. 93 percent of the 55.000 residents of this detention camp are women and children displaced during the war on ISIS. Among them, many Europeans are not being repatriated to their motherlands. In the out-of-competition documentary, The Matchmaker, Italian director Benedetta Argentieri tries to understand who these women are. The superstar she focuses on is Tooba Gondal. This very well-educated and fascinating woman, aka one of the most active jihadists on Twitter with more than 40 accounts, left London at the age of 20. By avoiding the abused categories of good and evil, Argentieri overcomes the common stereotypes framing women at war only as victims. On the contrary, she dives into the complexity of these figures, whose roles as fighters, propagandists, mothers, and wives very often overlap.
Luxembourg, Luxembourg by Antonio Lukich
Why are we so drawn to those who constantly run away from us? Director Lukich tries to find out in this autobiographical love letter to his absent father, who recently died in a wealthy European city. With incredible humor, love for details, a delicate gaze, two outstanding actors, and a compelling soundtrack. Luxembourg, Luxembourg, competing in the category Orizzonti, is a Ukrainian narrative feature present at the festival and wants to bring international attention to what is going to happen in the next decades because of the current war. “We want to attract attention to the problem with which we, as Ukrainians, will be faced after the war – the problem of absent fathers” the crew declared during the photo call action of the movie.
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