16th Giornate degli Autori Award Winners

Yesterday the 28 Times Cinemas jury voted for the GdA top award between three finalists, La LLorona by Jayro Bustamante, Only the Animals by Dominik Moll and Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa.

According to the event live video, the race was between La LLorona and Corpus Christi.  At the end it was La LLorona the one that got more votes and became the Venice Festival parallel section top winner.  The following is organizers statement about the winning film.

Bustamante, one of Latin American cinema's most unique voices, weaves a portrait of Guatemala's tragic history and its open wounds inspired by the legendary folk-tale of the same name. The combination of poetics and politics forges a haunting and acute fable not only about the past but of the present. La Llorona is an intimate ghost story told through a vivid female figure. It expends on the themes of loss, denial and acceptance. As the song 'La Llorona' says: Dicen que no tengo duelo, Llorona, porque no me ven llorar. Hay muertos que no hacen ruido, Llorona !Y es mas grande su penar! May the weeps of sadness but also of strength be felt across the world."

The other award in this section is the Europa Cinemas Label given to only European cinema and in this edition went to Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa.  The following is organizers statement about the honored film.

"Jan Komasa's Corpus Christi is an enticing mix of the tragic and the funny - sometimes violent, sometimes highly emotional. It is driven by a truly striking central performance by Bartosz Bielenia as the charismatic Daniel, a young offender who sees priesthood as a route out of his criminal ways. When he is sent out to work in a factory, he escapes to the local village and decides to pass himself off as a priest with a strangely positive impact on the rather bigoted community. The story represents very clearly the conflicts in society today and between good and evil. In addition, the film's clever choice of very contrasting music styles is especially effective in showing the tensions and conflicts within Daniel. A film to be seen by audiences across Europe, and we hope that winning the Europa Cinemas Label will help this process."

The last award is the one given by section audiences and this year went to Arab Blues by Manele Labidi.

Winners are in *BLUE.  To check winners at official site go here.

As it has every year since 2004, Giornate degli Autori, independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, is  held on August 28 September 7.

Official Selection

Competition

(*) 5 è il numero perfetto (5 Is the Perfect Number), Igort (Igor Tuveri), Italy, Belgium and France
ある船頭の話 Aru Sendō no Hanashi (They Say Nothing Stays The Same), Joe Odagiri, Japan
Barn (Beware of Children), Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway and Sweden
Bor mi vanh chark (The Long Walk), Mattie Do, Laos, Spain and Singapore
*Boże Ciało (Corpus Christi), Jan Komasa, Poland and France  Europa Cinemas Label Award winner
*La Llorona (The Weeping Woman), Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala and France GdA Director's Award winner
Lingua Franca, Isabel Sandoval, USA and Philippines
Seules les bêtes (Only The Animals), Dominik Moll, France and Germany
(*)Un divan à Tunis (Arab Blues), Manele Labidi, France  People's Choice Award winner
Un monde plus grand (A Bigger World), Fabienne Berthaud, France
ستموت في العشرين (*) You Will Die at 20, Amjad Abu Alala, Sudan, France, Egypt, Germany, Norway and Qatar

28 Times Cinema Jury
President: Karim Aïnouz, director, Brazil

(*) Debut film competing for the Lion of the Future Award

Out Of Competition
Closing Film: Les chevaux voyageurs (Time Of The Untamed), Bartabas, France

Special Events
Burning Cane, Phillip Youmans, USA
House of Cardin, P. David Ebersoler and Todd Hughes, USA (documentary)
Il Prigioniero, Federico Olivetti, Italy, 16' (short film)
Mio Fratello rincorre I dinosauri, Stefano Cipiani, Italy
Mondo Sexy, Mario Sesti, Italy (documentary)
Scherza con i fanti, Gianfranco Pannone, Italy (documentary)

Miu Miu Women's Tales
#17 Shako Mako, Hailey Gates
#18 Brigitte, Lynne Ramsay

Venetian Nights
Cercando Valentina, Giancarlo Soldi, Italy (documentary)
Emilio Vedova.  Dalla Parte del Naufragio, Tomasso Pessina, Italy (documentary)
La Legge degli spazi biachi, Mauro Caputo, Italy (documentary)
Sufficiente, Maddalena Stornaiuolo and Antonio Ruocco, Italy, 10' (documentary short film)
The Great Green Wall, Jared P. Scott, UK (documentary)

Lux Prize
Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Mads Brügger, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Belgium (documentary)
El Reino (The Realm), Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spain and France
God Exists, Her Name is Petrunija, Teona Stugar, Macedonia, Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia, and France

To check available info and trailer go @MOC 

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7/24/19
Yesterday organizers had their press conference where the announcement of this edition lineup was released to press.  Directed by Giorgio Gosetti, with Andrea Purgatori as President for the first time this year, Giornate features 11 films in competition and 8 special events, including the Miu Miu Women's Tales; the closing film Les chevaux voyageurs, about the "King of Horses" by the multi-faceted, engrossing Bartabas; and 8 Venetian Nights at the Villa degli Autori, along with a program of talks, tributes and special projects under the aegis of the two Italian filmmakers' associations ANAC and 100autori.

The films on the lineup come from 12 different countries. Along with Italy and the United States, the slate ranges from Africa and Asia to South America and Europe, with 6 first films in competition and four women filmmakers at the helm, and attests to a certain rigorousness Giornate has sought to exercise in its choice of titles, favoring a free-wheeling, independent creativity in filmmaking the world over. If any common thread is to be found in this assortment, you could say it's the clash of cultures that reveals just how fragile the contemporary world is, torn as it is between a desire for uniformity and conformity and the vitality of ancestral roots, unbowed by mass culture.

The other distinctive feature of the lineup is an inclination to seek out "pop culture" mediums that pique the curiosity of different kinds of audiences, in our belief that cinema today needs to speak to diverse communities of film-goers, while continuing to pursue common aims: to get its message across, stir emotions, ignite passions, and re-establish a direct connection between artist and audience, however a film is viewed.