US director wins top prize at Venice Film Festival
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American director Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," her exploration of the relationship between a father and his young daughter under the flashbulbs of movie celebrity, won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
The 39-year-old Coppola, daughter of famed director Francis Ford Coppola, added the coveted Golden Prize to a trophy shelf that already includes a Best Screenplay Oscar for her 2003 film " Lost in Translation," which, like "Somewhere," was set mostly in hotel rooms. Both films premiered on Venice's Lido Island where the festival was held.
Announced during a gala ceremony in the Palazzo del Cinema, the Silver Lion prize for Best Director went to Alex de la Iglesia for his Spanish civil war drama "A Sad Trumpet Ballad." Jerzy Skolimowski's "Essential Killing," about an Afghan prisoner who escapes in Europe, won the festival's special jury prize.
Vincent Gallo, the protagonist in "Essential Killing," won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, while "Attenberg" star Ariane Labed won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress.
Mikhail Krichman won the Best Photography prize for his work in Aleksei Fedorchenko's "Silent Souls," about a man's moving effort to return his dead wife to the area where she grew up, while de la Iglesia took home his second prize, for Best Screenplay.
In other prizes announced on Saturday, Mila Kunis, who starred in Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan," was given the Mastroianni Prize for the best emerging actor in a film that screened on the Lido. Kunis and Natalie Portman played rival ballet dancers in this opening night film at Venice.
"Majority," from 35-year-old Turkish director Seren Yuce, won the Venice Days Lion of the Future award, and "20 Cigarettes," which screened in the Italian sidebar Controcampo Italiano, was given the prize from Italian Film Journalists. The film is the first work from writer and director Aureliano Amadei.
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