Kiwi filmmaker Jane Campion has won the Silver Lion award for best director at the Venice Film Festival for her New Zealand-shot movie, The Power of the Dog.
The western, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, was filmed in various South Island locations last year. It is set to be released in cinemas on November 11, before being released on Netflix on December 1.
Campion became the first female filmmaker to receive the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, and was the second woman to be nominated for best director at the Academy Awards in 1994, for the New Zealand period drama The Piano.
Presenting The Power of the Dog in Venice earlier this month, Campion gave nods to fellow filmmakers Chloé Zhao, who won best director at this year’s Academy Awards for Nomadland, and Julia Ducournau, who won this year’s Palme d’Or for Titane.
“The girls are doing very well," Campion told reporters.
“All I can say is that, since the #MeToo movement happened, I feel a change in the weather. It's like the Berlin Wall coming down or the end of apartheid for us women.”
The Power of the Dog, based on the novel by Thomas Savage, is Campion’s first film since 2009, when she made a biographical drama about poet John Keats, Bright Star.
Campion told The Hollywood Reporter while she didn’t know what her next project would be, she planned to start a pop-up film school in New Zealand.
“I want it to be for free. It’s really important to me that people have the option to become filmmakers without having wealthy parents,” she told the publication.
”I know I’m going to get the money for it. I’ve actually already spoken to Netflix about it and they’re going to support me doing it. I’ll start with 10 students, I think. I also think it could be for people of any age group to explore their creativity.”
French-Lebanese filmmaker Audrey Diwan won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, taking home the Golden Lion award for best film for L’Evénement (Happening), a drama about illegal abortion in France in the 1960s.
This story was originally published on Stuff
