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Sofia Coppola Wins Top Prize at Venice Film Festival

posted by Women & Hollywood
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 2:14pm CDT

This is why awards matter.

When Somewhere premiered at Venice to mostly indifferent reviews it was pretty much dismissed as not as good as Lost in Translation which earned Coppola an Oscar Nomination.

Now a week later the film has gained some serious momentum when it surprised people by being the unanimous winner of the Golden Lion at the close of the Venice Film Festival.

Here’s what the jury president Quentin Tarantino said of the film. (FYI he is an ex-boyfriend of Ms. Coppola.)

It enchanted us from the first, and it grew and grew in our hearts, in our analysis, in our minds and affections. We kept coming back to it in discussions, even when talking about other films, because we found it kept illustrating what we were looking for in the winner of our Golden Lion.

Coppola is the fourth woman director to win The Golden Lion in the festival’s history. The other women are:

Margarethe von Trotta – Marianne and Juliane (Die Bleierne Zeit) in 1981
Agnès Varda – Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi) in 1985
Mira Nair – Monsoon Wedding in 2001

Here’s what she said about winning the award:

Since I started making films, there have been more and more women directors coming through. It can only be good that there are different stories being told from different points of view.

Sofia Coppola wins top prize for bittersweet tale (The Guardian)