EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a great achievement by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima.

By Peter Popham

Renowned Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima

ROME — Due to the long-running Hollywood writers’ strike, this year’s Venice festival, the 65th, was short on glitz, which lowered the temperature on the Lido but gave an opening to a host of indie films. The Special Jury Prize went to Teza by Haile Gerima, about an idealistic Ethiopian intellectual returning to his country. Best director prize went to the Russian Aleksey German Jr for Paper Soldier, about the first Soviet manned space flight, shrugging off a stinking review from Screen International, which said it was “sabotaged by pretentious blather”.

Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler won the 65th Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion last night. It premiered only one day before, giving what critics agreed was an otherwise lacklustre Venice a powerful sting in the tail.

Mickey Rourke, swaggering in oversize shirt and tie, with straggly blond locks draped over his face, went on stage to watch Aronofsky – whose previous film, The Fountain, flopped at Venice – receive the award. Rourke stars as a wrestler 20 years past his prime, girding himself for one last comeback, then after a heart attack trying to come to terms with the mess he has made of his life.

The story was close to the bone for Rourke, who was once a professional boxer and whose off-set excesses have condemned him to professional oblivion for the past 15 years. “I have splinters in my ass from sitting on the bench so long,” he told the BBC.

Acknowledging the autobiographical elements in the character of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, he said, “I realised Darren needed me to revisit some dark places where I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to think about my ex-wife or my family. But I knew he would want his pound of flesh, and there was no way I could skirt round it.”

Rourke’s epic yet touching performance has already led to talk of an Oscar. Variety wrote: “It’s a galvanising, humorous yet deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great screen performances.”

The American vacuum also sucked in an unusually large and varied Italian contingent, but the much-fancied Birdwatchers, by the Italo-Brazilian director Marco Bechis, about a tribe of Amazonian Indians lurching towards extinction and acted mostly by real tribals, failed to score.

Italy’s only mentions in the concluding ceremony were Best Actor for Silvio Orlando in Il Papa di Giovanni by the veteran director Pupi Avati, and Best First Film for Pranzo di Ferragosto by Gianni di Gregorio.

Source: The Independent