"Melancholia" wins Orizzonti grand prize in Venice IFF Wednesday, September 10, 2008
06:59 PM
Lav Diaz, a native of Maguindanao, won his second prize at the recently concluded 2008 Venice International Film Fest. Melancholia bagged the Orizzonti prize for Best Feature Film in the 65th edition of the Venice IFF.
Lav Diaz's eight-hour film Melancholia was the unanimous choice of a five-man jury of the 65th Venice International Film Fest. Last September 6, the Orizzonti prize for Best Feature Film was given to the Filipino filmmaker-making this his second prize from the VIFF.
In 2007, Lav Diaz won a Special Mention award for Kagadanan Sa Banwaan Ning Mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Enkantos), a nine-hour film that documented the death and desolation of the Bicol region after a killer typhoon.
This year, Lav Diaz was accompanied in Venice by the lead actors of Melancholia Angeli Bayani and Perry Dizon as well as Kristine Kintana (production supervisor). Other actors included in the film are Roeder Camanag, Raul Arellano, Dante Perez, Malaya, and Soliman Cruz.
Melancholia was chosen as the closing film of the Orizzonti (New Horizons) section of the Venice IFF. The Orizzonti Doc prize went to Below Sea Level by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy/USA) while special mention citations were given to Un Lac by Philippe Grandrieux (France) and Wo Men (We) by Huang Wenhai (China/Switzerland).
Another Filipino film, Francis Xavier Pasion's film Jay starring Baron Geisler, was supposed to compete for the Luigi de Laurentiis Award for Debut Film but it was later moved to the Orizzonti.
