Four Golden Lion-winning movies at Venice Film Festival will be screened at the Banner Film Festival organised by Banner Film Society at Lenin Balavadi in the city on Sunday.
Mike Leigh’s ‘Vera Drake’ (2004), ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (2005) by Ang Lee, Peter Mullan’s ‘The Magdalene Sisters’ (2002) and ‘Not One Less’ (1999) directed by Zhang Yimou are the films.
The British drama ‘Vera Drake’ revolves around the story of a working-class woman in London in 1950. The main character Vera Drake, keen on taking care of her family, serves as an abortionist without the knowledge of her family and receives no money for the deed. Later, Vera gets arrested as one of her patient’s condition turns critical. The arrest leaves a wave of shock at her family. She is sentenced to two-and-a-half-year imprisonment and the people who received her ‘service’ get affected by this.
A sub-plot surrounding an upper class young woman Susan also runs in between. The film bagged the Golden Lion in 2004 and was nominated for three Academy Awards and won three BAFTAs. Imelda Staunton enacts the role of Vera.
The Romantic drama ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is about the complex romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the American West from 1963 to 1983. It sketches how the lives of two men Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist turn topsy-turvy following a sexual intercourse after a night of heavy drinking.
The film was also honoured with Best Picture and Best Director awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Golden Globe awards, Producers’ Guild of America, Critics Choice Awards and Independent Spirit Awards. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, the most nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, where it won three - for best director, best adapted screenplay and best original score. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play the key roles.
Magdalene asylums aka Magdalene laundries are meant for women who are considered ‘fallen’ by their families or society. They are named so with reference to the Biblical character Mary Magdalene, the fallen woman who was forgiven by Jesus.
In ‘The Magdalene Sisters’, we see four teenage girls who were sent to these places, which are managed by individual religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Margaret, who was raped by her cousin; Bernadette, who flirts with boys; Rose, an unmarried mother; and Una, who is brought back by her father once she leaves the place; meet there. The film, shot entirely in the locations at the Dumfries and Galloway area, south-west Scotland, is set against the backdrop of 1964 Ireland.
On the education reform in China, ‘Not One Less’ has Wei Minzhi, a 13-year-old substitute teacher in the Chinese countryside in the lead. The film also takes a look at the economic gap between urban and rural populations and the prevalence of bureaucracy and authority figures in everyday life. It is shot in a neorealist /documentary style with a set of actors having the same names and occupations as in real life. The film has won several other awards other than Golden Lion and director Zhang Yimou won the award for best director at the Golden Rooster Awards.