Magdalene Sisters wins top film award

PETER MULLAN’S The Magdalene Sisters won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion yesterday.

The movie, denounced by the Vatican newspaper, tells the true story of four supposedly promiscuous girls interned in the Magdalene Asylums in the 1960s, forced to work as virtual slaves in laundries and abused by the Sisters of Mercy.

“This is a great honour,” said the Scottish director, who wore a deep blue kilt and purple velvet jacket as he accepted the golden trophy for his second feature.

“The film is not just about the Catholic Church and how they repress young women in Ireland, it’s about all faiths that think they have the right to pressure women,” said Mullan, best known as the star of ‘My Name Is Joe’. “But if they can free themselves in their minds, they can start to fight back.”

The film was enthusiastically received by audiences at the world’s oldest film festival, but slated by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano as an “angry and rancorous provocation” that misrepresented religious leaders.

Julianne Moore won best actress for her role as a perfect 1950s American housewife whose life falls apart in “Far from Heaven” and Italian heart-throb Stefano Accorsi took home the prize for best actor for his portrayal of poet Dino Campana in “Un Viaggio Chiamato Amore” (A Journey Called Love).

The runner-up Jury Grand Prix prize went to “Dom Durakov” (House of Fools), by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, which

focuses on the inmates in a psychiatric hospital in Chechnya who are completely unaware of the looming war with Russia.

South Korea’s “Oasis”, about a man who falls in love with a young woman with cerebral palsy, took home two prizes: a special director’s award for Lee Chang-dong and the award for best young actor or actress to Moon So-ri.

Tian Zhuangzhuang’s Chinese-language “Xiaocheng Zhi Chun” (Springtime In A Small Town) won the San Marco prize for more cutting-edge works.

A total of 21 feature films competed for the Golden Lion at the 59th Venice Film Festival and 19 for the San Marco prize. Before the awards ceremony, critics declared Moritz de Hadeln a winner, he was last-minute organiser of this year’s competition.

De Hadeln was called in just six months before the festival was due to start.