Almodovar's 'The Room Next Door' triumphs at Venice Festival

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's first English-language movie "The Room Next Door", which tackles the hefty themes of euthanasia and climate change, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice earlier in the week - one of the longest in recent memory.

Almodovar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, irreverent and often funny Spanish-language features.

He also won an Oscar in the best foreign language category for his 1999 film "All About My Mother".

Now aged 74, he has decided to try his hand at English, focusing his lens on questions of life, death and friendship. Speaking after collecting his prize, he said euthanasia should not be blocked by politics or religion.

"I believe that saying goodbye to this world cleanly and with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being," he said, speaking in Spanish.

He also thanked his two female stars for their performances.

"This award really belongs to them, it's a film about two women and the two women are Julianne and Tilda," he said.

While "The Room Next Door" had been widely tipped to win, the runner-up Silver Lion award was a surprise, going to Italian director Maura Delpero for her slow-paced drama set in the Italian Alps during World War Two - "Vermiglio".

Australia's Nicole Kidman won the best actress award for her risque role in the erotic "Babygirl", where she plays a hard-nosed CEO, who jeopardises both her career and her family by having a toxic affair with a young, manipulative intern.

Kidman was in Venice on Saturday, but did not attend the awards ceremony after learning that her mother had died unexpectedly.

France's Vincent Lindon was named best actor for "The Quiet Son", a topical, French-language drama about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.

The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for his 3-1/2 hour-long movie "The Brutalist", which was shot on 70mm celluloid and recounts the epic tale of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the United States.

"We have the power to support each other and tell the Goliath corporations that try and push us around: 'No, it's three-and-a-half hours long and it's on 70mm," he told the auditorium on Saturday.

ROAD TO OSCARS

The festival marks the start of the awards season and regularly throws up big favourites for the Oscars, with eight of the past 12 best director awards at the Oscars going to films that debuted at Venice.

The prize for best screenplay went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for "I'm Still Here", a film about Brazil's military dictatorship, while the special jury award went to the abortion drama "April", by Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili.

Sarah Friedland, an American-Jewish filmmaker, won the best director award for "Familiar Touch" in Venice's Horizons section, which runs alongside the main competition. She used her acceptance speech to denounce Israel's war in Gaza.

"I must note I am accepting this award on the 336th day of Israel's genocide in Gaza and 76th year of occupation," she said to loud applause. "I believe it is our responsibility as film workers ... to address Israel's impunity on the global stage."

Among the movies that left Venice's Lido island empty-handed were Todd Phillips's "Joker: Folie à Deux," starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, the sequel to his original "The Joker" which claimed the top prize here in 2019.

Luca Guadagnino's "Queer," with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and Pablo Larrain's Maria Callas biopic "Maria", starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano, also won plaudits from the critics but did not get any awards.

The Venice jury this year was headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert.