Venice becomes entangled with Palestine and Alexander Payne with himself

At this point, the news isn't about who won the Golden Lion at Venice, but about who didn't. Never before has the president of a film festival jury spent so much time reasoning not so much about their panel's decision as about the decision itself; that is, what at this point seems like a blatant error in awarding a prize. First, it was director Kaouther Ben Hania who barely managed to contain her bewilderment, if not anger, on stage. The Grand Jury Prize barely made her smile despite the hugs (which seemed more consoling than congratulatory) bestowed upon her by the person in charge of presenting her the trophy, filmmaker and fellow jury member Maura Delpero. In truth, you shouldn't think the worst of it either; it's understandable that it's hard to smile if the plot of your film, The Voice of Hind, is genocide, and more specifically, the murder of a six-year-old girl after hours of agony in the company of the corpses of her uncles and nephews. That's what happened to Hind Rajab when she died after being shot 355 times by the Israeli occupation army on January 29, 2024. But the truth is that joy, if it existed, was internal.

Shortly after receiving the statue of a winged Golden Lion, director Jim Jarmusch devoted his press conference to talking not so much about his film, his joy, or the good weather in Venice, but, in fact, about the rival film. He made it clear that the destruction of Gaza "is financed by people in the US who profit from the war." The comment was obligatory after learning that Mubi, the producer of the recent blockbuster Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, had announced a $100 million investment in Sequoia, a venture capital firm linked to Israeli defense technology. But there's more. There's always more. To what extent did the fact that Payne's agent and discoverer was David Lonner, a Hollywood mogul and staunch defender of Israel's current policy, influence the decision? Speculation is free.

Shortly after the ceremony, speaking to the press, Alexander Payne tried hard to appear calm. "The unfair thing about being at a festival is having to say this is better than that. It isn't," he said. He continued: "As a jury, we value both films equally, each for its own reason. We wish them both a long and important life, and we hope that the support of the awards we have given tonight will benefit them, each in its own way." Having said that, he rushed to loudly deny the rumor that one of the jury members had threatened to resign: "Don't pay attention to what you read on the internet," he said concisely, elegantly, and, most visibly, overwhelmed.

Payne's defenders argue that the award isn't so much for Jarmusch's film, which is also important, as for his impeccable career. But in his own defense lies penance. If it's about evaluating issues beyond the film itself, how can we ignore the 22 minutes of uninterrupted applause at the presentation of the Palestinian film? How can we turn a blind eye to genocide? And finally: it's not indecent (or, for that matter, immoral) for the winner to finance (it does, no matter how much justification it's embellished) the very genocide denounced by the loser. These aren't going to be peaceful nights for Payne.

And one more for free. The panel members were actresses Fernanda Torres and Zhao Tao, and directors Cristian Mungiu, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Stéphane Brizé, as well as the aforementioned Maura Delpero. In other words, it's hard to imagine a panel, on paper, more qualified and with more committed cinema. Rasoulof ( The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree ), remember, lives in exile in France after fleeing Iran, and Brizé has an entire filmography dedicated to gutting this thing called capitalism with films like The Law of the Market and At War . In both cases, to cite only the obvious (something similar could be said of Mungiu or Delpero), these are essentially political filmographies. Is it imaginable that they would side against Ben Hania? Answer: no, it isn't.

Whatever the case, what is clear is that the 82nd edition of the Mostra will be remembered for the year in which The Voice of Hind did not win the Golden Lion. The second memory will be for the president of the jury that made such a memory possible: Alexander Payne.