VENICE, Italy — The 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival came to a close Saturday, with the world premiere of “Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2” and the awards ceremony. Vincent Lindon won the best actor award for the French drama “The Quiet Son,” in which he plays a single father whose son is radicalized by the far right. There was no real consensus pick for the top prize going into the evening, and eyes were focused on what the Isabelle Huppert-led jury would bestow prizes upon this year.
Many of the 21 titles playing in competition have been divisive, with passionate supporters and detractors. “I have good news for you,” Huppert said at the ceremony. “Cinema is in great shape.
” Among the highest profile of the films up for the top prize included: Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the not-a-musical-musical with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga ; Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas film “Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as the famed soprano; the erotic thriller “Babygirl” in which Nicole Kidman gets entangled in a complicated affair with an intern, played by Harris Dickinson; Luca Guadagnino’s William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer,” with Daniel Craig as a junkie expat obsessed with a young student; Brady Corbet’s 215-minute post-war epic about an architect and a Holocaust survivor rebuilding a life in America, “The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody; and Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language mediation on death and friendsh.