Venice Film Festival prizes awarded

The 67th annual Venice Film Festival has concluded – well, except for the parties, The festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, went to Sofia Coppola's Somewhere.

The jury was presided over by Quentin Tarantino who took to the stage in sunglasses to announce the winners. The rest of the jury comprised Guillermo Arriaga, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino and Gabriele Salvatores. There were twenty-four films in the main competition.

Here's the full list of winners:
 
The Golden Lion for Best Film:
Somewhere, by Sofia Coppola (USA)
 
The Silver Lion for best director:
Álex de la Iglesia for Balada Triste de Trompeta (Spain, France)
 
The Special Jury prize:
Essential Killing by Jerzy Skolimowski
(Poland, Norway, Hungary, Ireland)
 
Coppa Volpi for best actor:
Vincent Gallo, in Essential Killing by Jerzy Skolimowski
(Poland, Norway, Hungary, Ireland)
 
Coppa Volpi for best actress:
Ariane Labed, in Attenberg by Athina Rachel Tsangari (Greece)
 
Marcello Mastroianni award for best young actor or actress:
Mila Kunis in Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky (USA)
 
Osella for best cinematography to:
Mikhail Krichman for Aleksei Fedorchenko's Silent Souls (Russia)
 
Osella for best screenplay to:
Álex de la Iglesia for Balada Triste de Trompeta (Spain, France)
 
Special Lion for overall directorial work to:
Monte Hellman

Congratulations to Sofia Coppola. The woman with everything now has everything plus a Golden Lion. We weren't crazy about Somewhere but we do dig her as a filmmaker and look forward to her next flick.

We didn't call Ariane Labed for best actress – there were so many great performances from actresses this year. But we did think Gallo might be awarded best actor. He came to Venice with three films this year, after his last festival trip to Cannes ended in disaster. Apparently, the man has been running around the Lido during the festival masking himself with a balaclava to escape the attentions of the paparazzi. He did not go up to the stage to collect his award and we suspect further theatrics later this evening. Nonetheless, Essential Killing is a pretty good film and should get a wider release than most of the pictures here.

Interestingly, we interviewed Monte Hellman just a few hours before he won his prize, and we will be posting that interview later in the week.

That's all from us in Venice. We'll be completing the rest of our coverage in the week but in the meantime, we're going to go and pack.

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