07/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: The feature by Brazilian filmmaker Marianna Brennand won the GdA Director’s Award, Alpha. received the Europa Cinemas Label and Taxi Monamour grabbed the Audience Award

Marianna Brennand with her GdA Director’s Award for Manas (© Isabeau de Gennaro/Cineuropa)

“Manas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marianna Brennand
film profile] is a window on the world that, thanks to an infinite attention to detail, plunges the spectator in an immersive and transformative journey. Manas won us over with the care and attention with which it stages a delicate and difficult theme such as that of abuse, whether in the domestic sphere or in more systemic contexts.” With that reasoning, the jury presided by director Joanna Hogg and composed of ten ex-participants of the 27 Times Cinema project, inaugurated in 2010 with the European Parliament, has assigned the 2024 GdA Director’s Award to Manas by Marianna Brennand.

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The Brazilian director’s first fiction feature has been chosen out of the 10 films in competition at the 21st edition of the Giornate degli Autori of the Venice Film Festival for “standing out in the programme for its mastery, its brilliant performances and its strong message that we believe will resonate with spectators around the world, raising awareness and asking for change”. The GdA Director’s Award is worth €20,000, with half going to the director, and half to the international seller of the film, in order to help its distribution.

The Europa Cinemas Label for the best European film in the Giornate degli Autori section, meanwhile, went to Alpha [+see also:
film review
interview: Jan-Willem van Ewijk
film profile]. [+see also:
film review
interview: Jan-Willem van Ewijk
film profile] by Jan-Willem van Ewijk. The jury composed of 4 members of the Europa Cinemas Network has crowned the film by the Dutch filmmaker with the following reasoning: “We were all very impressed with the script, the editing, the photography and the development of the characters in this dynamic and credible study of the father-son relationship. We also appreciated the choice of music and the absence of any kind of sentimentalism. Their attitudes and their skirmishes at the beginning of the film are resized when they face the grandeur and the power of the mountain. The film is directed in a wonderful way but the director never allows the spectator’s attention to move away from the intensity of the emotional and physical interaction between father and son, intent on facing a struggle for survival.” By receiving the Label, Alpha. will benefit from the promotional support of Europa Cinemas as well as better distribution thanks to a financial incentive for cinemas of the network, which will insert the film in their programme.

Lastly, the Giornate audience, who voted every day at the end of the screenings of the competition films, opted to give their prize to Taxi Monamour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ciro De Caro
film profile] by Ciro De Caro, which got 71.7% of the votes, followed by Manas (71.4%) and The Antique [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rusudan Glurjidze
film profile] by Rusudan Glurjidze (65.6%).

A reminder that, within the scope of the 21st Giornate degli Autori, Alice Rohrwacher will also receive the Andrea Purgatori SIAE Career Award and Federica Di Giacomo will receive the SIAE Creative Talent Award in the next few days, the latter of which opened the 2024 edition of the Giornate with her film The Open Couple [+see also:
trailer
interview: Federica Di Giacomo e Chiar…
film profile].

The awards:

GdA Director’s Award
Manas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marianna Brennand
film profile] - Marianna Brennand (Brazil/Portugal)

Europa Cinemas Label
Alpha. [+see also:
film review
interview: Jan-Willem van Ewijk
film profile] - Jan-Willem van Ewijk (Netherlands/Switzerland/Slovenia)

Audience Award
Taxi Monamour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ciro De Caro
film profile] - Ciro De Caro (Italy)

Andrea Purgatori SIAE Career Award
Alice Rohrwacher

SIAE Creative Talent Award
Federica Di Giacomo

(Translated from Italian)