S Poddar
The 81st Venice Film Festival concluded with one of its memorable closing moments when it handed the prestigious Golden Lion for Best Film to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar for The Room Next Door. After 11 days of screening, headed by the jury president Isabelle Huppert, Almodóvar’s English-language debut was picked as the best among 21 competing films. This win marks yet another important milestone in the career of this highly celebrated director.
The Room Next Door, the 23rd film from Almodóvar, is an adaptation of the novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez. The stars aligned: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton play two friends who reconnect after one is diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. As their friendship re-ignites, the terminally ill woman makes a gut-wrenching request-she asks her friend to be present in the next room when she ends her life through euthanasia. It touches on the topics of friendship, dignity, and the issue at the center of the polemic: assisted death.
Almodóvar thanked both lead actresses very much during his award acceptance speech, declaring that he was dedicating the Golden Lion to both Moore and Swinton. During the ceremony, Almodóvar spoke with passion about the universality of the story while urging more countries to adopt current euthanasia laws. “We have a law in Spain on euthanasia. It should be possible to have all over the world. It should be regulated, and the doctor should be allowed to help his patient,” Almodóvar said with passion. He underlined the fact that even though The Room Next Door may deal with a sensitive issue, the film is not political but a humanist piece of art.
Euthanasia has become a controversial issue worldwide, with only four European countries legally accepting it in 2024: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain; meanwhile, the law is still awaiting final regulation in Portugal. This touching declaration by Almodóvar has reopened debates on free will in such matters, making the film not only an artistic but also an outstanding event of great importance regarding current ethical debates.
Almodóvar is not new to the Venice Film Festival. His 2021 film Parallel Mothers, also released in Venice, earned lead actress Penélope Cruz with the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. In 2019, the festival honored him with an lifetime achievement award, setting in concrete his legacy as a filmmaker that always pushes boundaries while touching on deep human emotions. With the inclusion of The Room Next Door , the film will surely strongly compete for the upcoming Oscar race apart from the other titles being favorably mentioned in this year’s festival.
As for other major awards, the second-best Grand Jury Prize went to the Italian film Vermiglio. The Special Jury Prize was taken out by Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili with her film April, a one-of-a-kind tale about Nina, an obstetrician-gynecologist who was accused of performing abortions illegally. The film by Kulumbegashvili, lauded for its sensitive balancing between life, death, and the right of women to self-determination over their bodies, was one of the most talked-about entries this year.
Brady Corbet won the Best Director award for his epic The Brutalist, running over three and a half hours, which tells the story of László Tóth, a fictional Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor. Starring Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones, it charts the emigration of Tóth to America, where he tries to rebuild a life after the trauma of war. Critics were divided on the film’s length, but all gave kudos to Corbet for such an ambitious endeavor. Corbet took the stage and acknowledged his penchant for lengthy storytelling, thanking the jury for awarding merit to the film despite its demanding runtime.
Vincent Lindon won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor in the French cinema Jouer Avec Le Feu (The Quiet Son), about a father’s unsuccessful struggle to cope with his son’s descent into far-right extremism. It was a nuanced performance that won the attention of the jury, beating out expected front-runners such as Daniel Craig, nominated for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. This was an emotional speech from Lindon, who thanked the jury and saluted fellow nominee Isabelle Huppert before greeting each member individually with especial warmth.
Best Actress went to Nicole Kidman for Babygirl, which was concerned with communication within a BDSM relationship. Kidman herself did not attend due to the death of her mother, Janelle Ann Kidman, earlier this week. The film’s director, Halina Reijn, accepted the award on Kidman’s behalf, reading an emotional statement in which Kidman dedicated the award to her late mother. “The collision of life and art is heartbreaking, and my heart is broken,” Kidman wrote of the emotional toll of her personal loss.
Well, because the curtains are falling for the 2024 Venice Film Festival, one thing that has become crystal clear is that this year, films presented at the Festival tackled almost everything from euthanasia and extremism to the complexities of human relationships. Top-lined by Pedro Almodóvar’s *The Room Next Door*, the festival again proved its role as a launching pad for some of the most provocative films of the year, setting into full gear an exciting awards season ahead.
