Venice Film Festival 2022 top prize goes to US opioid epidemic documentary

'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed', by Oscar winner Laura Poitras, wins the Golden Lion

Laura Poitras received the Golden Lion for Best Film for 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed'. Getty Images

Luca Guadagnino, left, received with the Silver Lion for Best Director Taylor Russell, right, won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actress for 'Bones And All'. Getty Images

Guadagnino with the Silver Lion for 'Bones and All'. AFP

Cate Blanchett won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress she received for 'Tár'. AFP

Iranian director Houman Seyyedi won the Orizzonti Award for Best Film for 'World War III'. AFP

Mathilde Warisse and Juliette Louchart collect the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film for 'Snow in September' on behalf of Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir. Getty Images

French-Iranian actress Mina Kavani and Iranian actor Reza Heydari collect the Special Jury Prize on behalf of jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, for 'Khers Nist (No Bears)'. AFP

Heydari and Kavani with the Special Jury Prize. Getty Images

Hiroyuki Hayashi, right, won the Venice Classics Award for Best Restored Film for 'Branded to Kill'. Getty Images

Rainer Frimmel, Vera Gemma and Tizza Covi with the Orizzonti Award for Best Director and the Orizzonti Award for Best Actress for 'Vera'. Getty Images

Katie Davison with the Venice Classics Best Documentary Award for 'Fragments of Paradise'. Getty Images

Soudade Kaadan poses with the Armani Beauty Audience Awards for 'Nezouh'. Getty Images

Houman Seyyedi with the Orizzonti Award for Best Film for 'World War III'. Getty Images

Pedro Harres won the Venice Immersive Grand Jury Prize for 'From the Main Square'. Getty Images

A documentary tracing an artist's campaign against the family accused of helping to spark the US opioid drug epidemic scooped the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, on Saturday.

Cate Blanchett won her second Venice acting award for her performance as a predatory classical music conductor in Tár, having won in 2008 for her unexpected turn as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There.

She thanked "people around the world who make music which has kept us going in the last couple of years".

Colin Farrell was named Best Actor for his part in the pitch-black Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin, which also won the best screenplay award for writer-director Martin McDonagh.

Scroll through the gallery below to see fashion from the opening ceremony of Venice Film Festival 2022

But the jury, led by Julianne Moore, determined that the best of the 23 films in competition was All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

It is the latest documentary from Oscar-winner Laura Poitras, who previously made history as the first person to contact whistleblower Edward Snowden when he exposed massive surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Her new film explores the traumatic and brilliant life of photographer Nan Goldin, and her recent campaign to publicly shame the Sackler family who own the pharmaceutical firm behind painkiller OxyContin.

"I've known a lot of brave and courageous people in my life but I've never known anyone like Nan," Poitras said as she picked up the award.

"Someone who could decide to take on the billionaire Sackler family, which is ruthless and responsible for countless deaths and so much bloodshed."

The opioid addiction crisis has caused more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the US — and the Sackler's company has been ordered to pay up to $6 billion in damages.

Cannibal wins

Taylor Russell won the Best Newcomer award for Bones and All, in which she played alongside Timothee Chalamet as lovelorn cannibals.

Italy's Luca Guadagnino also won Best Director for the film, which saw him reunited with Chalamet following their Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name.

The Special Jury prize went to No Bears by Iran's Jafar Panahi who in July was imprisoned for "propaganda against the system". His detention was the subject of a flash mob protest on Friday on the Venice red carpet, led by Moore.

The film's actor, Reza Heydari, told journalists after the awards he had received a message earlier in the day from Panahi in prison.

"He told me do not get in trouble for him," he said. "The award he has received brings a message — an artist in a prison or outside a prison can still produce his message because he loves art and he loves cinema."

The second place Silver Lion went to Saint Omer by French director Alice Diop, inspired by the true story of a Senegalese migrant on trial for infanticide in France.

Mixed reviews

Critics were deeply divided over many of the films at this year's festival, but it was a stellar year for individual actors.

There were rave reviews for Brendan Fraser, making an unlikely comeback from the Hollywood wilderness as a morbidly obese English professor in The Whale.

And, Hugh Jackman's performance as a father dealing with a depressed teenager in The Son was labelled the best of his career.

Netflix had been hoping for a big year, but its much-hyped Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, tested the patience of many critics, despite acclaim for its Cuban star Ana de Armas.

Venice Immersive provides a glimpse into the future of film and much more — in pictures