Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Shape Of Water’ Wins The Top Prize At The Venice Film Festival

There’s a seasonal, water-cooler joke around The Playlist: whatever we see at the Venice Film Festival, the Golden Lion top prize inevitably goes to a film we missed and or review way after the fact. This year, this curse is not the case as the universally loved “The Shape Of Water” from Guillermo del Toro won the the coveted main award (our review). “There is unmistakable, idiosyncratic care poured into every frame of ‘The Shape of Water,’ saturated with del Toro’s offbeat compassion and looping, pattern-recognition intelligence,” she wrote glowingly.

Granted, we kind of missed a lot of the other winners, but since we’ve bucked the hex for once we’ll take it.

The Venezia 74 Jury, chaired by Annette Bening, and comprised of Ildikó Enyedi, Michel Franco, Rebecca Hall, Anna Mouglalis, David Stratton, Jasmine Trinca, Edgar Wright and Yonfan having viewed all 21 films in competition, decided as follows:

READ MORE: Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘The Shape Of Water’ Is Sweet & Scary Movie Magic [Venice Review]

GOLDEN LION for Best Film to:
THE SHAPE OF WATER
by Guillermo del Toro (USA)

SILVER LION – GRAND JURY PRIZE to:
FOXTROT
by Samuel Maoz (Israel, Germany, France, Switzerland)

SILVER LION – AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR to:
Xavier Legrand
for the film JUSQU’À LA GARDE (France)

COPPA VOLPI
for Best Actress:
Charlotte Rampling
in the film HANNAH by Andrea Pallaoro (Italy, Belgium, France)

COPPA VOLPI
for Best Actor:
Kamel El Basha
in the film THE INSULT by Ziad Doueiri (Lebanon, France)

AWARD FOR BEST SCREENPLAY to:
Martin McDonagh
for the film THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI by Martin McDonagh (Great Britain) [our review]

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to:
SWEET COUNTRY
by Warwick Thornton (Australia)

MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD
for Best Young Actor or Actress to:
Charlie Plummer
in the film LEAN ON PETE by Andrew Haigh (Great Britain) [review]

LION OF THE FUTURE
“LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” VENICE AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM

Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film Jury at the 74th Venice Film Festival, chaired by Benoît Jacquot and comprised of Geoff Andrew, Albert Lee, Greta Scarano and Yorgos Zois has decided to award:

LION OF THE FUTURE
“LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” VENICE AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM to:

JUSQU’À LA GARDE
by Xavier Legrand (France)
VENEZIA 74

as well as a prize of 100,000 USD, donated by Filmauro to be divided equally between director and producer.

ORIZZONTI AWARDS
The Orizzonti Jury of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, chaired by Gianni Amelio and composed of Rakhshan Banietemad, Ami Canaan Mann, Mark Cousins, Andrés Duprat, Fien Troch and Rebecca Zlotowski, after screening the 31 films in competition has decided to award:

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST FILM to:
NICO, 1988
by Susanna Nicchiarelli (Italy, Belgium)

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR to:
Vahid Jalilvand
for BEDOUNE TARIKH, BEDOUNE EMZA (NO DATE, NO SIGNATURE) (Iran)

the SPECIAL ORIZZONTI JURY PRIZE to:
CANIBA
by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (France, USA)

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST ACTRESS to:
Lyna Khoudri
in LES BIENHEUREUX by Sofia Djama (France, Belgium, Qatar)

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR to:
Navid Mohammadzadeh
in BEDOUNE TARIKH, BEDOUNE EMZA (NO DATE, NO SIGNATURE)
by Vahid Jalilvand (Iran)

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST SCREENPLAY to:
Dominique Welinski and René Ballesteros
for LOS VERSOS DEL OLVIDO by Alireza Khatami
(France, Germany, Netherlands, Chile)

the ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST SHORT FILM to:
GROS CHAGRIN
by Céline Devaux (France)

the VENICE SHORT FILM NOMINATION FOR THE
EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS 2017 to:
GROS CHAGRIN
by Céline Devaux (France)

VENICE VIRTUAL REALITY AWARDS
The Venice VR Jury of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, chaired by John Landis and composed of Cécile Sciamma and Ricky Tognazzi has decided to award:

the BEST VR AWARD to:
ARDEN’S WAKE (EXPANDED)
by Eugene YK Chung (USA)

the BEST VR EXPERIENCE AWARD (FOR INTERACTIVE CONTENT) to:
LA CAMERA INSABBIATA
by Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang (USA, Taiwan)

the BEST VR STORY AWARD (FOR LINEAR CONTENT) to:
BLOODLESS
by Gina Kim (South Korea, USA)

VENICE CLASSICS AWARDS
The Venice Classics Jury, chaired by Giuseppe Piccioni composed of 26 students of Cinema History, chosen in particular from the professors of 12 Italian Dams university programmes and from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, has decided to award:

the VENICE CLASSICS AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY ON CINEMA to:
THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK
by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski (Poland, Germany)

the VENICE CLASSICS AWARD FOR BEST RESTORED FILM to:
IDI I SMOTRI (COME AND SEE)
by Elem Klimov (USSR, 1985)

GOLDEN LION FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT 2017 to:
Jane Fonda
Robert Redford

JAEGER-LECOULTRE GLORY TO THE FILMMAKER AWARD 2017 to:
Stephen Frears

Check out all our coverage of the 2017 Venice Film Festival here.