No Date, No Signature Takes Top Venice Film Festival Prizes

TEHRAN.(Iranart) - Iranian film No Date, No Signature, a handsomely made, exceptionally well-played drama by Vahid Jalilvand, was awarded for best director and best leading actor at Horizons section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

After receiving his award, leading actor Navid Mohammadzadeh said “the award goes to Iran” and thanked Jalilvand and his co-actor Amir Aghaei for helping him wind the top prize.

He then mentioned the presence of Rakhshan Banietemad as jury member at this year’s Venice, and added, “I’m delighted to receive the award from an A-list director from Iran.”

No Date, No Signature was selected as one of the two Iranian representatives at the Horizons. The other movie was The Disappearance directed by Ali Asgari. The feature film tells the story of a forensic doctor who comes across a corpse he knows from the past. Amir Aghaei, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Hediyeh Tehrani and Saeed Dakh play in the 104-minute film.

The jury members of Venice Horizons section, which is dedicated to more cutting-edge fare, included Italian auteur Gianni Amelio (The Stolen Children). He oversaw a panel consisting of Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad, whose Tales won the 2014 Venice best screenplay prize; US director Ami Canaan Mann, whose Texas Killing Fields competed on the Lido in 2011; Irish-Scottish director Mark Cousins, best known for his 15-hour documentary, The Story of Film: An Odyssey; Argentine screenwriter Andres Duprat, whose The Distinguished Citizen just won multiple nods at the Platino Ibero-American Film Awards; Belgian director Fien Troch, whose Home took the 2016 Horizons best director prize; and French writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski, whose Planetarium, starring Natalie Portman, screened in Venice last year.

The 74th Venice Film Festival ran Aug. 30 to Sept. 9. The festival’s top prize known as Golden Lion went to Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water.