Argentinian director Maria Aparicio’s drama “Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion” — which mixes personal and political elements — has scored the Venice Days director’s award, the section’s top prize. But one afternoon, at the Reina Sofía Museum, a man approaches her. His name is Dante and he is an Argentinian historian researching labor struggles in his country and the career of Juan Bialet Massé” [who was a pioneer of labor law and public health in Argentina].” Eva Bianco stars as Eva, while Roger Koza plays Dante.
The jury, headed by Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, said in a statement: “A woman. Encounters and missed encounters. A film that portrays the solitude of the present, holding together an intimate dimension and a political charge, inviting us to think about labor, immigration and privilege through a delicate mise en scène built on small gestures rather than big events.” The statement continued, “The personal and the collective, fiction and documentary, history and present time merge into a single breath.
We left the cinema deeply moved, by a sadness and a spirit of rebellion that do not oppose one another, but coexist, as two faces of the same disorientation.” The section’s top award comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($23,000). This is to be split equally between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor, which is Spain’s Paper Moon. The Europa Cinemas Label for best European film in the section, awarded by a separate jury, went to French filmmaker Robert Guèdiguian’s “A Woman Today,” about a young woman named Juliette who holds a top job in finance and whose world collapses when she is assaulted by a colleague at a company event.
The Venice Days People’s Choice Award, based on preferences expressed at the end of the screenings, went to Italian director Nicola Sorcinelli’s “Balcanica,” about Afghan musicians traveling along the Balcan route after music has been banned in their country, starring Matilda De Angelis (“Citadel: Diana”) who is also a co-producer on the film.
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