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Golden Lion Awards
The Golden Lion (Italian: Leone d'Oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguished prizes. In 1970, a second Golden Lion was introduced; this is an honorary award for people who have made an important contribution to cinema. The following films received the Golden Lions:
Joker
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
crime
drama
Before the Rain
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Republic of Macedonia, during war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's ...
bollywood
civil war
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
tragedy
war
The Wrestler
This is a drama about an aging professional wrestler, decades past his prime, who now barely gets by working small wrestling shows in VFW halls and as a part-time grocery store employee. As he faces health problems that may end his wrestling career for good he attempts to come to terms with his life ...
depression
drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
life & death
melancholy
social commentary
Roma
A year in the life of a middle-class family's maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
autobiographical
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
The Magdalene Sisters
A thoroughly mind-provoking film about 3 young women who, under tragic circumstances, see themselves cast away to a Magdalene Asylum for young women in 1964. One of many like institutions, the asylums are run like prisons and young girls are forced to do workhouse laundry and hard labor. The asylum, ...
controversial
corruption
drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
social commentary
tragedy
Brokeback Mountain
Two young men, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, meet when they get a job as sheep herders on Brokeback Mountain. They are at first strangers, then they become friends. Throughout the weeks, they grow closer as they learn more about each other. One night, after some heavy drinking, they find a deeper co ...
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
love story
melancholy
queer
tragedy
Vera Drake
Vera Drake is a selfless woman who is completely devoted to, and loved by, her working class family. She spends her days doting on them and caring for her sick neighbor and elderly mother. However, she also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. While the ...
depression
drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
political
prejudice
social commentary
Not One Less
In a remote mountain village, the teacher must leave for a month, and the mayor can find only a 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to substitute. The teacher leaves one stick of chalk for each day and promises her an extra 10 yuan if there's not one less student when he returns. Within days, poverty forc ...
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
Lust, Caution
Frustrated in his attempts to assassinate Yee, who is an important official in Japanese-ruled Shanghai, Old Wu, who has lost his wife and two sons as well as two women who had attempted to seduce Yee, now recruits Kuang, Mai Tai Tai, and their troupe of drama students from Hong Kong University in ye ...
art house
controversial
drama
erotic
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
Vive L'Amour
The film focuses on three city folks who unknowingly share the same apartment: Mei, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-ang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
art house
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
The Woman Who Left
After spending the last 30 years in prison, Horacia is immediately released when someone else confessed to the crime. Still overwhelmed by her new freedom, she comes to the painful realization that her aristocratic former lover had set her up. As kidnappings targeting the wealthy begin to proliferat ...
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
Still Life
Still Life is a poignant, quixotic tale of life, love and the afterlife. Meticulous and organized to the point of obsession, John May (Eddie Marsan) is a council worker charged with finding the next of kin of those who have died alone. When his department is downsized, John must up his efforts on hi ...
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
Monsoon Wedding
A story set in the modern upper-middle class of India, where telecommunications and a western lifestyle mix with old traditions, like the arranged wedding young Aditi accepts when she ends the affair with a married TV producer. The groom is an Indian living in Texas, and all relatives from both fami ...
bollywood
family
family drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
Cyclo
A young man who struggles through life by earning some money with his bicycle-taxi in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city) gets contact to a group of criminals. They introduce him to the mafia-world of drugs and crime.
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
surreal
The Shape of Water
An other-worldly story, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962, where a mute janitor working at a lab falls in love with an amphibious man being held captive there and devises a plan to help him escape.
artistic
family
fantasy
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
love story
political
Pieta
A loan shark is forced to reconsider his violent lifestyle after the arrival of a mysterious woman claiming to be his long-lost mother.
drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
life & death
social commentary
tragedy
Michael Collins
Neil Jordan's depiction of the controversial life and death of Michael Collins, the "Lion of Ireland", who led the IRA against the UK and helped found the Irish Free State in 1922.
biography
civil war
drama
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
historical
history
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Sam and Jonathan, a pair of hapless novelty salesman, embark on a tour of the human condition in reality and fantasy that unfold in a series of absurdist episodes.
absurd
art house
artistic
depression
Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival)
golden palm
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