Pedro Almodovar, Vincent Lindon and Nicole Kidman awarded at the Venice Film Festival

The festival also rewarded the risk-taking of Hollywood icon Nicole Kidman and the work of French cinema icon Vincent Lindon with its acting awards.

First prize I

Oscar-winning Almodovar, author of such masterpieces as “All About My Mother,” “Bad Education” and “Pain and Glory,” is a regular at the biggest festivals. But he had never been awarded a top prize in the competition before.

Finally, it is the jury chaired by Isabelle Huppert, another great face of European auteur cinema, that gives this award to the quintessential director of women and feelings. “It's my first film in English, but the spirit is Spanish,” he declared when receiving the award.

He took the opportunity to make a plea for euthanasia, arguing that “saying goodbye to this world with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being.”

Movida's former enfant terrible is rewarded for a film with a twilight tone, which “talks about a woman dying in a world that is also dying.”

Vincent Lindon, Best Actor

The show rewarded another recognizable figure, Vincent Lindon, 65, for a role that fits him like a glove, mixing intimate, social and political: that of a father confronted with the drift of one of his sons to the violent far right, in “Play with fire”.

“It is very rare that a French president (of the jury) is so generous to someone from his country. It's very rare and very chic,” he smiled before kissing Isabelle Huppert, who presented him with “an award that (he) has dreamed of for a long time and (which) changes the course of existence.”

Nicole Kidman, 'pretty amazing'

The actress award went to Nicole Kidman – absent due to the death of her mother – who, at 57, once again plays on her glamorous image in “Babygirl”, a new generation erotic thriller.

The actress rarely reveals herself in this role of a New York tech tycoon who has an affair with a young intern who leads her in an SM soft game. Huppert considered her performance “quite extraordinary”, praising actress and director Halina Reijn for this “very interesting portrait of a woman. […] both strong and fragile.

A trophy that's also a message: it rewards a post-MeToo film and salutes rare risk-taking in the profession. Kidman is filmed on all fours, giving a mug of milk in the submission game, naked, from behind or getting botox injections.

For its 81st edition, the world's oldest film festival was packed with Hollywood stars, but some of the most anticipated films were left empty-handed, including “Joker: Folie à deux”, with Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix, or “Maria”, the Callas biopic with Angelina Jolie.

Paul Kircher, best young prospect

Among the other winners, “The Brutalist,” a monumental 3:30-hour feature film about the journey of an architect who survived the Shoah, played by Adrien Brody, won best director for Brady Corbet. Very popular in recent months in France, Paul Kircher received the revelation prize at the age of 22 for his role in “Their children after them”, inspired by the novel by Nicolas Mathieu.