Venice Gives Its Prizes, and Two Winners Face the Consequences

The Venice film festival closed with two of its most talked-about awards going to work that its own audiences received standing. According to the Guardian, the documentary NAZA, on Gaza, was met first with stunned silence in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema, then with an ovation as the audience rose almost as one. Separately, the Iranian actress Laleh Marzban won the best newcomer prize for her portrayal of a woman held hostage by her father in Falling House, and dedicated the award to the women of Iran.

Both gestures have carried a cost. The Guardian reports that the directors of NAZA now face vitriol in Israel amid a febrile election campaign, including death threats, while Marzban has come under severe attack from Iranian authorities following her speech. The festival, in other words, produced not one controversy but two, running in opposite political directions from the same Lido stage.

For the Cultura desk the pattern is the familiar one: Venice remains the most reliably international of the major festivals, and the prizes it hands out are read as statements well beyond the cinema. What the Guardian describes is a festival whose applause travels badly — acclaim in the Sala Grande converted, within days, into pressure at home.