Venice Critics’ Week Awards: Tommaso Usberti’s ‘Before the War’ Crowned Best Film

The 41st Venice International Film Critics’ Week, the independent section running parallel to the film festival and organized by the Italian National Film Critics Union, has given out its hotly anticipated awards.

The Grand Prize for Best Film went to Tommaso Usberti’s Italian film Before the War (Prima della guerra), “for its intense and vibrant direction, for the powerful and expressive talent of its lead actor, for the mastery of its mise-en-scène, thanks to superbly crafted images in which bodies, faces and gestures create an impressive physical tension — while provincial Italy becomes the stage for violent passions,” according to the jury comprised of French director Chloé Barreau, Hungarian producer Júlia Berkes and film industry professional Caterina Mazzucato.

Before the War, set in Italy’s Po Valley, tells the story of Guido, just over 20 years old and raised amid violence and racism, and his encounter with Sonia, a young Kosovar immigrant. The film has also won the Luciano Sovena Award for Best Producer.

The Audience Award goes to Our Share of Sand by Shalini Adnani, a family drama that reflects on inequality and the environmental crisis, and the Mario Serandrei – Hotel Saturnia Award for Best Technical Contribution goes to The End of Times by Bibiana Rojas Gómez and Juan David Cárdenas Maldonado. “For its ability to rewrite time by using editing as a form of narrative expansion of the material, underscoring the importance of audiovisual archives in blending a medium from the past such as VHS with the future of AI processing, giving life to an effective Esperanto of images,” said the jury. Using artificial intelligence, Salomé revisits decades of family videos in an attempt to understand her mother’s sadness.

The Circolo del Cinema di Verona Award, awarded to the “most innovative” film in the selection, goes to Dong Jie’s Zoom In, Zoom Out. “Through a young, unprecedented and emerging cinematic language, the film is able to shape a timely reflection on the post-digital existence of an entire generation, showing how the digital medium does not detract from human experience but enriches it,” said the jury. It follows Shi, a young game designer, who embarks on a difficult journey through the city in search of Gao, his missing roommate. Following a clue hidden in an online game, he unexpectedly encounters YY, Gao’s girlfriend. Shi and YY move between the real world and virtual spaces in search of the truth.

Venice Critics’ Week Short Film Award goes to E-I-E-I-O by Noemi Arfuso, “for its ability to address with irony and incisiveness a crucial issue of our present, showing us that when human bodies disappear, nature takes over,” according to the short film jury comprised of Raffaella Di Giulio, head of sales at Fandango Sales, director Giulia Grandinetti and journalist and filmmaker Paola Piacenza. Arfuso’s short depicts two synthetic entities who play at exterminating human beings, monitoring the progress of their plan through a network of surveillance cameras. Everything seems to be going according to plan, until a sudden uprising puts the mission at risk.

A special mention goes to Where the Tears Wait (Dove le lacrime aspettano) from Caterina Bertini and Blu Diego Fasoli, and the Best Director Award in the short film category goes to Revolver by Paoli De Luca.

Best Technical Contribution Award goes to the short film Se mai le cose by Giulia Cosentino, “for its ability to transform an intimate space into a place of passage, where the memory of what has been confronts the possibility of what may still be.” The film, about a woman who returns to the apartment where she lived with her partner to collect her belongings, also won the Centro Nazionale del Cortometraggio Award. “A delicate and personal story about how much humanity passes across the surfaces of the things around us, able to find in everyday life a sincere way of speaking about memory and identity, fragility and freedom,” said the jury.

London, the debut feature by Brazilian filmmakers Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli, wins the prestigious Queer Lion Award 2026, which since 2007 has been dedicated to the best film dealing with LGBTQIA+ themes. The movie follows London, a young, disabled queer man who works as an erotic performer and dominant in a fetish house, but when a doctor suggests he get a medical exam to learn more about his body, London faces a difficult choice about his identity and hard-fought independence.