Venice's Prizes Follow Their Winners Home, and Not Always Gently

The Venice film festival closed with its awards, but two of those awards have since travelled — and the reception abroad has been considerably rougher than the ovation in the Sala Grande. According to the Guardian, the documentary NAZA, on Gaza, was met with a moment of stunned silence at its screening in the Palazzo del Cinema, after which the audience stood almost as one. Its directors have since faced what the paper describes as vitriol in Israel amid a febrile election campaign, including death threats.

A second Venice winner, the Iranian actress Laleh Marzban, has come under severe attack after dedicating her best newcomer prize to "the women of Iran". The Guardian reports condemnations from authorities at home over a speech delivered on an Italian stage. Marzban won for her portrayal of a woman held hostage by her father in Falling House.

Taken together, the two episodes describe something the festival circuit does not often advertise: that a prize given in Venice is a statement made in Rome's lagoon but received elsewhere, in jurisdictions with their own censors, courts and electorates. The Biennale's screening rooms are, for a fortnight, a place where films can be shown without consequence. The consequence arrives afterwards, by telephone and by decree, in the countries the films are about.

Venice has long positioned itself as the festival most willing to programme work that other circuits approach cautiously — the Mostra's history includes politically charged selections that drew protests from governments rather than from critics. What the Guardian's reporting makes plain is that this reputation now imposes costs on the filmmakers themselves. The NAZA directors, acclaimed inside the Palazzo del Cinema, returned to an election season in which their film has become an argument. Marzban, honoured for a performance, returned to official condemnation for a sentence of dedication.

The asymmetry is the story. In Venice, an award is conferred by a jury and registered by the foreign press; in Tehran or in Israel, it is read as an intervention. The Guardian notes that the Israeli reaction unfolded against a febrile election campaign, which suggests the film's reception is not solely about the film. Similarly, the attacks on Marzban concern her words from the stage rather than the role that won her the prize.

For the festival itself, the practical question is what such outcomes do to future submissions. Directors weighing whether to bring a film to the Lido now have two recent cases in which the prize and the penalty arrived in the same envelope. The Biennale has not, in the Guardian's account, proposed any change to how it handles award ceremonies or acceptance speeches; the reporting describes the reactions, not a festival response.

Seen from the culture desk, the episodes also test the working assumption that festivals are safe rooms for difficult work. The ovation in the Sala Grande is real, and so are the threats reported afterwards. Whether Venice can continue to attract films that carry that risk — and whether filmmakers will accept the terms — is a question the next edition will answer in its programme rather than in its press releases.