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Goethe’s Faust by Alexander Sokurov Wins Venice’s Golden Lion

Whenever my native country’s people win awards and receive accolades, I feel immensely proud and happy. Alexander Sokurov has won the Golden Lion at the 68th Venice International Film Festival for his adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. I am proud and happy.

The film’s official release date is December 8, 2011. You did know it’s my birthday on December 9, didn’t you?

And this is the video of the awards ceremony. The Golden Lion comes at the very end. Sokurov says: “It (the Lion) is so small, and we had to walk such a long way to get it. I am grateful to be living in the cinema. Our film had a truly international cast and crew. At one point we counted people from 38 countries on the set. Grazie“.

An adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s seminal masterpiece marks the end of Sokurov’s cinematographic enquiry into the nature of human power. His previous films studied the notion in the context of the great political, if controversial, figures of the 20th century – Vladimir Lenin of Russia (Taurus), Adolf Hitler of Germany (Moloch), and Emperor Hirohito of Japan (The Sun). Faust, in the words of the film’s producer, Andrey Sigle, “has no particular relevance to contemporary events in the world—it is set in the early 19th century—but reflects Sokurov’s enduring attempts to understand man and his inner forces“.

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