Director Lav Diaz holds the Golden Lion award for Best Film for the movie “The Woman Who Left” during the awards ceremony of the 73rd Venice Film Festival on September 10, 2016 at Venice Lido. / AFP / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)
  • Festivals

‘The Woman Who Left’ Wins Venice 2016, Emma Stone is Best Actress for ‘La La Land’

In a year when Hollywood had a massive presence on the Lido, smaller films from all corners of the world ended being selected by the jury for the top awards. The Golden Lion went to the Filipino revenge drama The Woman Who Left, by director Lav Diaz. The Silver Lion for Best Director was a tie between Russia’s Andrei Konchalovsky for Paradise and Mexico’s Amat Escalante for The Untamed.

From the high-profile slate of star-driven titles only Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, Pablo Larraín’s Jackie and Damien Chazelle’s La La Land received accolades. Ford was awarded the Jury Grand Prize – a “second place” of sorts in festival parlance. Jackie’s writer Noah Oppenheimer earned the Best Screenplay award, and Emma Stone was chosen Best Actress for La La Land.

Oscar Martinez won Best Actor for his work in the Argentine-Spain co-production The Distinguished Citizen, and Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour received the Special Jury Prize for her cannibal apocalypse travelogue The Bad Batch.

Other awards included the Marcello Mastroianni Prize for Young Performer for Frantz’s Paula Beet, and the Luigi de Laurentiis Lion of the Future to Tunisian director Ala Eddine Slim’s The Last of Us. See the complete list of winners of Venice 2016.