Penelope Cruz’s latest performance is already earning her some hardware…
The 47-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress was awarded the Volpi Cup Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Cruz, in an upset for Spencer star Kristen Stewart, won the award for the performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers.
In her acceptance, she said the honor was 100% his, saying, “thank you once again for your trust in me, for inspiring me every day with your search for truth inside and outside the set… you have created magic again.”
Cruz further dedicated the win to her husband Javier Bardem and their children as well as to Bardem’s recently deceased mother. Pilar Bardem “did so much for actors and actresses in our country and her love and passion for this wonderful profession was huge,” said Cruz, adding, “At the end of our last conversation she told me, ‘I love you.’ She was very fragile and I thought those were her last words to me, but then very quiet and very soft and with a smile on her face she said to me two more words ‘Coppa Volpi’… This is for all the mothers.”
Parallell Mothers centers on two single women, who meet in a hospital room where they are both going to give birth. One is middle aged and doesn’t regret it, while the other is adolescent and scared. The two women form a strong bond with one another as they both confront motherhood.
Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña won the Best Short Film prize.
They took home the award for their film Los Huesos, a fictitious take on the world’s first animated film, which uses a three-person melodrama as a metaphor for Chile’s turbulent socio-political regime. Dated in 1901 and excavated in 2021 as Chile drafts a new constitution, the “found” footage shows a young girl performing a ritual with human body parts. The corpses are revealed as the bodies of Diego Portales and Jaime Guzmán, central figures in the construction of authoritarian and oligarchic Chile.
French-Lebanese filmmaker Audrey Diwan won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, for her 1963-set abortion drama L’Evénement (Happening).
Here’s the list of the award winners:
VENICE 78
Golden Lion
L’Evénement, dir: Audrey Diwan
Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize
The Hand Of God, dir: Paolo Sorrentino
Silver Lion, Best Director
Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog
Volpi Cup Best Actress
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Volpi Cup Best Actor
John Arcilla, On The Job: The Missing 8
Best Screenplay
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
Special Jury Prize
Il Buco, dir: Michelangelo Frammartino
Marcello Mastroianni Award for for Best New Young Actor or Actress
Filippo Scotti, The Hand Of God
HORIZONS
Best Film
Pilgrims, dir: Laurynas Bareisa
Best Director
Eric Gravel, A Plein Temps
Special Jury Prize
El Gran Movimiento, dir: Kiro Russo
Best Actress
Laure Calamy, A Plein Temps
Best Actor
Piseth Chhun, White Building
Best Screenplay
Ivan Ostrochovský, Peter Kerekes: 107 Mothers
Best Short Film
Los Huesos, dirs: Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña
Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis Award For A Debut Film
Imaculat, dirs: Monica Stan, George Chiper Lillemark
VENICE VR EXPANDED
Grand Jury Prize for Best VR
Goliath: Playing With Reality, dirs: Barry Gene Murphy, May Abdalla
Best VR Experience
Le Bal De Paris De Blanca Li, dir: Blanca Li
Best VR Story
End of Night, dir: David Adler
HORIZONS EXTRA
Audience Award
The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic, dir: Teemu Nikki