As the world’s oldest film festival – not to mention one of the most prestigious – the Venice Film Festival has always been a step ahead of the rest, and many of the recipients of its top prize, the Golden Lion, have gone on to transform the cinematic landscape. Among them are European arthouse gems from the likes of directors Agnès Varda and Michelangelo Antonioni, but also defining works of world cinema that brought greater global attention to auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Ang Lee and Guillermo del Toro. Regardless of their country of origin, these films all possess a ravishing visual style, themes that speak to the cultural zeitgeist, and a sense of humanity that makes them timeless.
Ahead of the festival’s 81st edition, due to run from 28 August to 7 September, we choose nine unmissable winners from decades past that remain as powerful and relevant today as ever. Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa’s astonishing thriller single-handedly raised the profile of Japanese cinema in the west following its triumph at Venice. Set in a sun-dappled forest, it tells the story of a murdered samurai from four differing perspectives, as each character tries to conceal their true intentions.
Aparajito (1956) The second instalment of Satyajit Ray’s deeply moving Apu Trilogy charts a boy’s coming of age as he moves with his parents from rural Bengal to Varanasi. Centred on a captivating performance by Pinaki Sengupta, it’s a poetic tale of aspiration, loss and yearning in.