The Leoncino d’Oro award ceremony took place Friday, September 6, at 5 p.m., at the Italian Pavilion of the Hotel Excelsior. Leoncino d’Oro was instituted by AGISCUOLA and promoted by A.G.I.S., A.N.E.C. and David di Donatello – Accademia del Cinema Italiano. The award was presented in front of Vincenzo Mannino (Councillor of the Minister of Education and Merit), Pietrangelo Buttafuoco (President of La Biennale), Alberto Barbera (Artistic Director of the Venice International Film Festival), Andrea Del Mercato (General Director of La Biennale), Luigi Lonigro (President of the Union of Film Editors and Distributors).
Doing the honours: Piera Detassis (President and Artistic Director Accademia del Cinema Italiano – Premi David di Donatello), Mario Lorini (President A.N.E.C. and Vice-President A.G.I.S.), Domenico Barbuto (Secretary General A.G.I.S.), Andrea Iacomini (Spokesperson UNICEF Italy).
Now in its 36th edition, the Leoncino has become one of the most relevant and significant side awards of the Venice Film Festival. Once again this year, a group of young jurors from all over Italy awarded the prestigious Cinema for UNICEF prize. The prize has been present at the Festival since 1980 following an agreement with the Italian Committee for UNICEF, which this year celebrates 50 years of activity in Italy.
The Leoncino d’Oro of the 81. Venice Film Festival goes to the film Jouer avec le feu by Delphine and Muriel Coulin with the following motivation:
“With great courage, the film fully faces the consequences of incommunicability and violence, expressing them through a parent’s lack of control, facing the fracture of the bond with his child. The search for a membership, as a way to escape from human weakness, becomes the breaking point that defines the protagonist’s fate. Raw and authentic, the movie reveals itself to be a necessary and urgent testimony, capable of speaking to different generations. For these reasons, the Leoncino d’Oro of 81st edition of the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia goes to ‘Jouer avec le feu’, by Delphine and Muriel Coulin.”
The jury awarded the Cinema For UNICEF recommendation to the film Familia by Francesco Costabile with the following motivation:
“For the intensity and efficacy through which this work drags you to a tragic everyday life, where the brutality of the patriarchal system passes on generation by generation. For having made clear that denial of childhood and violence cannot provoke anything but hate and new abuses, the Cinema for UNICEF report of the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival goes to ‘Familia’ by Francesco Costabile.”
The Agiscuola Leoncino d’Oro is part of Agiscuola’s activities, whose main objective is to bring young people closer to cinema and theatre, which are considered fundamental training tools. These, together with other iconic verbal languages, meet the needs of a modern school, which can no longer be traditional and conservative but must open up to new experiences and social, pedagogical and didactic stimuli.
The Leoncino d’Oro is one of the initiatives JESUS’anised by AGISCUOLA in collaboration with A.G.I.S., A.N.E.C. and the Accademia del Cinema Italiano—Premi David di Donatello, with the support of M.I.C. and M.I.M., to bring young people closer to cinema. This initiative allows them to actively participate and experience one of the most prestigious film events first-hand.
The associations involved in the Leoncino d’Oro project work all year round to promote visual and film culture among Italian students and the future audience. This underlines the importance of an ever-growing commitment, also public, in the field of education and training.
The initiative takes place within the National Plan Cinema and Images for Schools framework, promoted by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Merit.