On the largest island of cinema in the world, a Brazilian film triumphs at Giornate degli Autori

“While the Venice 81 competition sees Walter Salles representing Brazil,” declare Giorgio Gosetti and Gaia Furrer, General Delegate and Artistic Director of Giornate, respectively, “our own jury bestowed its award on an emerging woman filmmaker backed by Salles and the Dardenne Brothers. It’s a story that seems to evoke our 2024 Giornate poster: a girl doing a balancing act on a tightrope suspended between the reiteration of abuse and a social system that justifies it. A narrative of courage and emancipation, and the sisterhood that, from a remote place, touches a chord: for the jury, president Joanna Hogg, and all of us.”

In the final jury session, the other contenders for the accolade were Super Happy Forever by Kohei Igarashi and Antikvariati/The Antique by Rusudan Glurjidze.

The People’s Choice Award at Giornate went to Taxi Monamour by Ciro De Caro, while the Europa Cinemas Label was handed to Alpha. by Dutch filmmaker Jan-Willem van Ewijk, a masterful thriller sure to enthrall European audiences everywhere.

Giornate degli Autori, the independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival promoted by the filmmakers’ associations ANAC and 100autori, kicked off this year with the traditional pre-opening event Bookciak, Azione!, where the guest of honor was Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. From that moment on, Giornate welcomed the public to the Sala Perla for the screenings of the seventeen films on the official lineup, eleven of them directed by women. Among the titles, the Georgian film The Antique, surrounded by a controversy on freedom of expression and copyright that is one for the books. After Giornate’s precautionary measure to suspend the screening in the wake of an emergency decree by the Court of Venice concerning the majority producer (the Georgian company Cinetech), the same court subsequently authorized our official screening on September 6^th, in the name of the author’s right to freedom of expression.

For the fourth year now, the Casa degli Autori has hosted films and events in the Sala Laguna and the garden’s outdoor space, with its green carpet overlooking the lagoon where over 2,000 coffees were served up this year, courtesy of our partner Lavazza. And just around the corner, our long-standing Venetian Nights program unfolded. Featuring nine films, both fiction and documentaries, it’s arranged jointly with Isola Edipo and co-directed by Gaia Furrer and Silvia Jop.

The biggest novelty of our 21^st edition was our new talk series Side by Side/#confronti, packed with ideas and discussions on a vast array of topics, in an event combining films and other audiovisual content with debate on subjects such as policies that will safeguard the audiovisual industry, environmental issues and the measures to take, and the avenues opened up by artificial intelligence.

The Miu Miu Women’s Tales showcase has racked up a collection twenty-eight short films by the world’s most iconic women filmmakers, and this year’s new entries to the Tales, by directors Laura Citarella and Chui Mui Tan, bowed on the Sala Perla screen, while the Veneto Region/Veneto Film Commission’s Space at the Hotel Excelsior was the venue for choice talks moderated by Penny Martin, with an all-woman roster featuring Raffey Cassidy, Valentina Romani, Alia Shawkat, Marisa Abela, Cailee Spaeny, Chase Sui, Molly Gordon, and Jasmin Savoy Brown.

In the last two weeks on the Lido, Giornate has welcomed a gaggle of film personalities either here with their films or to take part in Q&As with the Venice Film Festival public – actors, filmmakers, musicians, screenwriters and artists of the likes of Patti Smith, Francesco Bianconi, Alice Rohrwacher, Mariane Satrapi, Chiara Francini, Asia Argento, Jonas Carpignano, Nanni Moretti, Lou Doillon, the Quay Brothers, Rosa Palasciano, Giovanni Soldini, Lino Musella, Seydou Sarr, Maduka Okoye, Angela Fontana, Ascanio Celestini, and Cristina Donadio.

The Villa where Giornate all started twenty-one years ago was earmarked for press events and celebrations, thanks to cultural promoter Francesco Marchetti and the collaboration with Giffoni Innovation Hub and I Wonderfull, partnering with Rai Cinema. Ten days spent in the company of leading cinematic lights such as Kevin Costner, Thomas Vinterberg and Luke Wilson.

The numbers for Giornate degli Autori are growing, proof of the participatory swell of an audience that has deemed the GdA program a cultural offering that complements that of Venice at large. The venues at the Casa degli Autori saw a turnout of over 4,500 people, with audiences at our screenings up by 13%, while social media garnered a pool of over 50,000 unique users who followed Giornate activities on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Linkedin.