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14 unusual facts about Venice Film Festival


Andrew Beck

At 19 he co-starred in Cold Light of Day, a British film which went on to win the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1990.

DeeDee Halleck

She received two Rockefeller Media Fellowships for The Gringo in Mañanaland, a compilation film about stereotypes of Latin Americans in U.S. films, which was featured at the Venice Film Festival, the London Film Festival and won a special jury prize at the Trieste Festival for Latin American Film and first prize from the American Anthropological Association's Visual Anthropology Division in 1998.

Don Fish

One award winning television commercial for British Airways featured John Le Mesurier was produced with John Flanagan and won a Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Don Scardino

Feature film directing work includes Me & Veronica (Venice Film Festival), and Advice from a Caterpillar, winner, best comedy, at Aspen Comedy Festival.

Giovanni Volpi

He inherited a fortune, at the age of 24, from his father, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, a politician financier and founder of the renowned Venice Film Festival.

João Botelho

Aqui na Terra (1993, Here on Earth Venice Film Festival official selection, competition; film selected to the day of Europe, exhibition simultaneously in Germany, France and Portugal.

Tempos Difíceis (1987, Hard Times) "?title=Venice Film Festival">Venice Film Festival, official selection, competition – award of Italian critics-, Festival de New York, Lincoln Center

Quem És Tu? (2001) "?title=Venice Film Festival">Venice Film Festival, official selection, competition; Mimo Rotella Award for Best Artistic Contribution in Venice Biennale

Jonathan Power

Jonathan received a Silver Medal at the Venice Film Festival, 1972, for the BBC documentary film,"It's Ours Whatever They Say", about a group of mothers who fight for a piece of railway land to be made into a playground after one of their children fell to his death while playing on the roof of their block of council flats.

Keith Waterhouse

It was nominated in six categories of the 1964 BAFTA awards, including Best Screenplay, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1963; in the early 1970s a sitcom based on the character was quite popular and ran to 25 episodes—a respectable run for a British sitcom, although it has seldom been seen since.

Kivu Ruhorahoza

Kivu Ruhorahoza arrived on the international film platform in 2007 with his first short film Confession which won the City of Venice Award at the Milan African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival and was screened at the Venice Film Festival.

Lancia di Lancia

In 2009 Lancia launched the Lancia di Lancia speedboat at the Venice Film Festival.

Rai Movie

Since 2003 it is the official media partner of the Venice Film Festival and since 2007 of the Rome Film Festival.

Themis Panou

He is the first and only Greek actor to win the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, a prestigious award given during the Venice Film Festival.


Antonello Matarazzo

Since 2000, the year of his debut video, The Fable, a short film produced and broadcast by Fuori Orario (Raitre), he has taken part in many national and international festivals, such as the Venice Film Festival, Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen Montpellier, Rome Film Fest, Torino Film Festival, Festival international du film sur l'art de Montréal, Mar del Plata Film Festival and the Locarno International Film Festival), receiving many prizes and rave reviews.

Augusto Genina

He won Venice Film Festival Mussolini's cup for Best Italian Film twice, in 1936 by Lo squadrone bianco and in 1940 by The Siege of the Alcazar, both Fascist propaganda films.

Ermanno Olmi

In 1988, his La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker), based on the novel by Joseph Roth and starring Rutger Hauer, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as a David di Donatello award.

Guerrilla filmmaking

Mists (Derivas) directed and produced by Portuguese filmmaker Ricardo Costa, premiered at 60th Venice Film Festival, 2003, and released in New York at the Quad Cinema in 2011, is a radical example of this practice.

In the City of Sylvia

En la Ciudad de Sylvia was nominated for the 2007 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, although the award was eventually presented to Ang Lee for 'Lust, Caution'.

Lion of Saint Mark

The Lion of Saint Mark is also the symbol of the award of the Venice Film Festival, the "Golden Lion", and of the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali.

Mario Nuzzolese

Always moved by his passion for culture, art and politics, he participated several times to the Annual Academy Awards, Festival de Cannes and Venice Film Festival.

Mark Childress

The film Crazy in Alabama was an official selection of the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals in 1999.

Megan Burns

She won the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the Venice Film Festival for her performance.

Nichole Bloom

Special Jury Prize
Festival Prize
Nominated -
Grand Jury Prize

Nikita Mikhalkov

On September 8, 2007, Mikhalkov’s film 12, a modern adaptation of Sidney Lumet's court drama Twelve Angry Men, received a special Golden Lion for the “consistent brilliance” of its work and was praised by many critics at the Venice Film Festival.

Nothing But a Man

The movie premiered at Philharmonic Hall and had a limited run in a few cities, receiving rave reviews at the New York Film Festival and winning a coveted prize at the Venice Film Festival, but it was unable to find a wider distribution except at theaters specializing in independent and foreign films.

Seven Swords

Seven Swords was used as the opening film to the 2005 Venice Film Festival and as a homage to Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954).

Shōta Sometani

In 2011, he received the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his work in Himizu along with his co-star Fumi Nikaidō.

Signe Baumane

Her films have been screened at important film festivals such as Annecy, Tribeca, Sundance, Berlin, Ottawa, Venice and they have received numerous awards.

Something Like an Autobiography

The book deals with the period from the director's birth to his winning the Golden Lion for Rashomon from the Venice Film Festival in 1951; the period from 1951 through 1980 is not covered.

Viktor Avdyushko

The actor starred in many films during the 1960s and early 1970s, and performed in fifty until the end of his career, including the 1961 Biennale Jury Prize winning Peace to Him Who Enters and the 1964 The Alive and the Dead, based on Konstantin Simonov's novel.