Auteur sparks

I won’t be there to judge, but to let myself be guided by curiosity, admiration, and passion.” This is how American actress, screenwriter, and director Maggie Gyllenhaal describes her role as Jury President of Venice 83. A free spirit resistant to industry formulas, Gyllenhaal returns to Venice five years after her directorial debut with The Lost Daughter – which earned her the award for Best Screenplay – with a narrative that dismantles conventional depictions of motherhood. Raised in an artistic family, she avoided easy shortcuts by giving life to complex female figures, from Secretary (2002) to an Academy Award nomination for Crazy Heart and a Golden Globe win for the miniseries The Honourable Woman. Her ongoing exploration of women’s bodies and voices eventually drew her behind the camera. “The seed of curiosity,” she explained, “was planted by my role in The Deuce: my characters often give me the strength to experiment.” Playing Candy, a sex worker who reclaims autonomy by becoming an adult-film director, became the catalyst that led her to seize full control of the narrative. That artistic inquiry continued this year with The Bride!, a reimagining of the Bride of Frankenstein myth. Far from a conventional horror film, it stands as a “celebration of all the parts of each of us that do not fit into the box we are told we must fit into.”
From contending for the Golden Lion to presiding over the Orizzonti Jury. Just one year ago, Valérie Donzelli triumphed on the Lido by winning the award for Best Screenplay with La mattina scrivo (In the Morning I Write), an internationally acclaimed feature adapted from Franck Courtès’s autobiographical novel, charting the resolute choice of an author willing to surrender all material security to heed his literary voice. “This radical and deeply personal choice moved me profoundly,” the director explained, describing a work fueled by “the urge to create, no matter what happens.” That very urgency runs as a guiding thread through her filmography. After beginning in architecture studies and acting, she achieved international recognition in 2011 with Declaration of War (La guerre est déclarata).
Here, Donzelli took an uncompromising path: translating the real-life illness and recovery of her child to the screen, transforming a private crisis into an anthem of vitality. From that breakthrough – through the dark fable of illicit love in Marguerite & Julien to the acclaimed Just the Two of Us (L’Amour et les Forêts), a chronicling of resistance and liberation against a coercive partner – she has consistently wedded social insight with sharp, understated irony. It is a perceptive, independent gaze attentive to human vulnerability, which Donzelli now brings as jury president to chart new territories in contemporary cinema.
Four years ago, Carolina Cavalli presented her debut feature, Amanda, in the Orizzonti Extra section; today she returns to the Lido as President of the Luigi De Laurentiis Venice Award for a Debut Film. In interviews, the filmmaker has repeatedly emphasized the decisive role competitions play in enabling emerging creators to break through on their own merits, having experienced their value firsthand. Her career began in that exact manner in 2018 as a screenwriter, winning the Premio Solinas with the series Mi hanno sputato nel milkshake: “Juries evaluate ‘blind’ entries unattached to resumes, giving emerging authors and directors a genuine chance to make their mark,” she noted. Then came critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, introducing her distinct sensibility to wider audiences who later recognized her signature style in Il rapimento di Arabella (The Kidnapping of Arabella): cinema defined by lingering atmospheres and characters shaped by understated inner turmoil. For the filmmaker, the idiosyncratic quirks of her leads are never superficial affectations, but honest observations of everyday life: “I always feel I draw my characters directly from reality: you meet people and notice symptoms, eccentricities, which after all we all possess. We are human.”