Amid a busy fall festival season, all eyes are back on the Lido Saturday night as we eagerly await the winners from the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
The honors are being handed out by the international jury, headed up by U.S. filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, as stars are dressed to the nines one last time for this year’s final, glitzy Lido red carpet event.
Among the frontrunners is NAZA, a documentary from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and a late addition to the Venice lineup, which features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. The film’s title, NAZA, comes from an acronym the Israeli military uses as a shorthand for civilian casualties. The film’s Venice premiere was a sensation, with the gala audience giving it a record 25-minute standing ovation.
A favorite going into the awards was Possible Love from acclaimed Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong (Burning). The social drama, about a struggling working class family and the well-to-do documentarian who picks them as a subject for her new film, received some of the best reviews out of Venice, with most, like The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney, singling out the film’s “superlative ensemble” including veteran Korean actors Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine), and Sul Kyung-gu (Peppermint Candy, Oasis), alongside rising stars Zo In-sung (Hope, Moving) and Cho Yeo-jeong (Parasite). Netflix will be confident of its award-season chances for the film, which has been selected by South Korea as its pick for the Best International Feature race.
