Actress Nicole Kidman was awarded the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, but missed the ceremony due to the death of her mother.
“I arrived in Venice and found out shortly after that my beautiful, brave mother, Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed,” Kidman said in a statement read by “Babygirl” director Halina Reijn. “I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her. … She shaped me and made me.”
“The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, topped the Venice Film Festival and was awarded its Golden Lion award.
The 81st edition of the festival came to a close Saturday, with the Isabelle Huppert-led jury bestowing top prizes to Brady Corbet, for directing the 215-minute post-war epic “The Brutalist” and Vincent Lindon, for his lead performance in “The Quiet Son.”
Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio” won the Silver Lion award, the runner up prize. The Italian-French-Belgian drama is about the last year of World War II, in which a refugee soldier happens upon a large family.
Almodóvar’s win came after his film, a meditation on friendship and death, received a nearly 20-minute standing ovation. The Spanish filmmaker is a Venice favorite, having premiered many of his films at the festival over the past four decades.
“I would like to dedicate it to my family,” Almodóvar said. “This movie … it is my first movie in English but the spirit is Spanish.”
Corbert, whose “The Brutalist” is about an architect and a Holocaust survivor rebuilding a life in America, came armed with a written statement to read at the ceremony—something his filmmaker wife had encouraged him to do.
“This is all very overwhelming. … Brevity has never been my strong suit,” Corbet said. “Thank you for not holding its length against me.”
The Venice Film Festival used its closing film slot to host the world premiere of Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 2.” The film played out of competition.
The Luigi De Laurentiis award for a debut film went to Sarah Friedland’s “Familiar Touch,” about an octogenarian’s transition to life in assisted living as she grapples with her age, her memory, and her relationship to her caregivers. Friedland also won the director prize in the horizons section and her star, Kathleen Chalfant, won the actress prize.