Won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival
Yorgos Lanthimos and his new movie “The Favourite” triumphed at the Venice Film Festival, where it won two awards. The new movie of the award-winning director won the Grand Jury Prize, while his protagonist, Olivia Colman, won the Festival Award for Best Actress.
The film was co-produced by England, Ireland and America and had two more protagonists, the Oscar-winning Emma Stone and Rachel Weiss. Receiving her award, Colman said “It is my honor that the Venice Festival fell in love with our work. I loved every second of this collaboration. ”
This was the second time that Yorgos Lanthimos left Venice with an award, as, in 2011, the “Alps” had won the Scenario Award. At the press conference of the Venice Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos had said about “The Favorite”: “The film focuses on three women who are complete people, contrary to the males of the cinema who see women as wives, mistresses and objects of desire. We made multi-dimensional, wonderful, nightmarish women. Complex, like every human being. ”
From the films that featured in the Festival, “The Favorite” now receives an “entry” from Venice to the upcoming Oscar Awards. In the role of Queen Anna of England and with a role written and directed on the thin line of a caricature and the melancholy of a lonely woman, Olivia Colman is also on her way to an Oscar nomination, with her co-star Emma Stone, also claiming an Oscar. Rachel Weiss has also been described as exquisite.
This film is the first comedy of Yorgos Lanthimos, a fiery look at the history of the British reign. It is also the first film with which the Greek director – who was a member of the creative team that designed the start and end of the 2004 Summer Olympics – gradually escapes the form with which he had been introduced with the “odd” Cinema. His writing continues to be clear and his stories remain obscure but, at the same time, they transform into something more intimate, much more welcoming to the general public.
Every one of his films, from “Dogtooth”, in 2009, until his last, has won awards at the festivals. That year, “Dogtooth” won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes International Film Festival and was announced, on 25 January 2011, to be a candidate for the Oscar for Foreign Language Film 2010. On September 10, 2011, he was honored with the Best Screenplay Osella Award at the Venice Film Festival for the film “Alps”, while in 2015, with the “Jury prize” of the Cannes Film Festival for the film “The Lobster”. At the same festival, he once more won the script award for the film “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”.
Yorgos Lanthimos is the only Greek director whose films managed to find two candidates for Oscar. He is 45 years old, his father, Antonis Lanthimos, was a well-known basketball player in the Pangrati team. Lanthimos studied directing at the Stavrakos School. His fellow students have spoken of a very low-key and modest man. He started with music video clips and commercials with which he won many international awards.
His first directing was when he took the comedy of Lakis Lazopoulos, “My best friend”, followed by “Kinetta” and his great leap to the international recognition of “Dogtooth”, which, when screened in the Cannes Festival’s parallel program “Un Certain Regard”, won the first prize of this parallel program. His success established him internationally and especially in England, in which case, England and Ireland immediately for his next film, “The Lobster”, took over the production of the film.
The overwhelming majority of the actors were English, including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weis and Olivia Colman. With this film, he won an Oscar nomination for a script he had written along with Efimis Philippos.
After this success, too many movie stars started to contact him for further collaboration – including Nicole Kidman, resulting in Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell starring in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer“. His international accolade was absolute.