‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ wins Golden Lion for best film at Venice Film Festival

Father Mother Sister Brother, directed by Jim Jarmusch, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by director Alexander Payne.

The film details three stories of three families, focusing on adult siblings and their parents.

“Art does not have to address politics directly to be political,” Jarmusch said. “It can engender empathy and a connection between us, which is really the first step.” He also expressed his gratitude for the appreciation of “our quiet film.” An audience member cried out, “We love you, Jim!”

Each story in Father Mother Sister Brother, which Jarmusch also wrote, dramatizes a different relationship: a brother (Adam Driver) and sister (Mayim Bialik) who visit their aging father (Tom Waits); two sisters (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps), also visiting their novelist mother (Charlotte Rampling); and twins (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) dealing with their late parents’ apartment.

The 21 features in the competition frequently reflected real-world tensions, including “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama about a Palestinian girl in a car under fire by the Israeli military, and the emergency phone dispatchers trying to save her. The well-received film, which uses real recordings of the emergency calls, won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.

During the awards, prize winners spoke at length in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and against the horrors of war. And last Saturday, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the Lido, the island where the festival was held.

This year’s edition continued the festival’s run of starry casts, including Julia Roberts, Emma Stone, Oscar Isaac, George Clooney, Colman Domingo, Dwayne Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Jude Law, Amanda Seyfried, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Jesse Plemons, Emily Blunt, Lee Byung-hun and Jacob Elordi.

The festival opened with Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, a tragicomedy about an Italian president at the end of his term. Other prominent films included A House of Dynamite, Frankenstein, No Other Choice, Jay Kelly, The Wizard of the Kremlin, Dead Man’s Wire, After the Hunt, The Testament of Ann Lee, Cover-Up, In the Hand of Dante and Bugonia.

The Silver Lion for best director was given to Benny Safdie for The Smashing Machine, a portrait of MMA champion Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson). The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Below the Clouds, a black-and-white look at Naples and Mount Vesuvius, directed by Gianfranco Rosi, one of the few documentarians to have won the Golden Lion.

The Volpi Cup for best actor went to Toni Servillo for his role as the Italian president in La Grazia, the latest of his collaborations with Sorrentino. The award for best actress was given to Xin Zhilei, who plays a woman reconnected with a former lover in Cai Shangjun’s The Sun Rises on Us All. Luna Wedler won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for outstanding emerging actor for her performance in Ildiko Enyedi’s “Silent Friend.”

The best screenplay prize went to the director, Valérie Donzelli, and her co-writer, Gilles Marchand, for At Work, about a photographer turned writer struggling to stay afloat.

The Lion of the Future prize for best debut feature was given to Short Summer, directed by Nastia Korkia, which follows a child coming of age in wartime Russia. In the Orizzonti section, another competition slate in the festival, On the Road, directed by David Pablos, picked up the top award for a story about a drifter and a trucker who strike up a bond. Maryam Touzani’s Calle Malaga received the Armani Beauty Audience Award, which was preceded by a standing ovation for Giorgio Armani, who died Thursday.

This year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to Kim Novak, star of the classic Vertigo, and to Werner Herzog, whose documentary Ghost Elephants screened in the festival. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award went to Julian Schnabel, whose new film, In the Hand of Dante, played out of competition. And the Campari Passion for Film Award went to Gus Van Sant, who directed “Dead Man’s Wire,” also shown out of competition.