Venice Film Festival to receive 2022 Gotham Impact Salute Award

The Gotham Film & Media Institute announced today that the Venice International Film Festival will receive the Gotham Impact Salute during the 2022 Gotham Awards Ceremony, taking place live and in person in New York City on Monday, November 28. The full list of nominations and honorees for the 2022 Gotham Awards will be announced at a later date.  

As the first major awards ceremony of the fall season, the Gotham Awards provide critical early recognition and media attention to worthy independent films and series and their writers, directors, producers, and actors with twelve competitive awards categories. The awards are also unique for their ability to assist in catapulting award recipients prominently into national awards season attention.

Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham Film & Media Institute, stated: “It is a privilege to announce that this year’s Impact Salute will honor The Venice International Film Festival, the oldest and one of the most influential film festivals in the world which is organized by La Biennale di Venezia. In addition to premiering some of the greatest films each year, Venice has had a major impact upon the U.S. independent film industry over the course of many decades, helping to elevate the work of filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, Regina King, Ang Lee, Kenneth Lonergan, Terrence Malick, Kimberly Peirce, Kelly Reichardt, George A. Romero, Gus Van Sant and Julie Taymor with world premiere screenings. These filmmakers and their films have subsequently gone on to receive numerous accolades and awards while raising awareness of the American independent film industry as a whole. As part of our annual celebration of independent film at the Gotham Awards and in recognition of our longstanding collaboration with the Biennale College Cinema, we feel that we have a unique role in recognizing the impact of this extraordinary legacy of excellence.”

The Venice International Film Festival aims to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organizes retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution towards a better understanding of the history of cinema. Founded in Venice, Italy in August 1932, the festival is organized by La Biennale di Venezia, one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world which is overseen by President Roberto Cicutto. The 79th Venice International Film Festival is set to take place at Venice Lido from 31 August to 10 September 2022. 

Under renowned Italian critic Alberto Barbera’s artistic direction, the festival has hosted the world premieres of many award-winning films including Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Being John Malkovich (1999), Memento (2000), You Can Count on Me (2000), Gravity (2013), Birdman (2014), Spotlight (2015), La La Land (2016), The Shape of Water (2017), The Favourite (2018), Roma (2018), Joker (2019), Nomadland (2020) and One Night in Miami (2020). Other U.S. world premieres have included My Own Private Idaho (1991), Far From Heaven (2002), Frida (2002) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).

The Gotham has been an Academic Partner of Biennale College Cinema – La Biennale di Venezia’s project dedicated to the education of young people in the artistic fields and in the activities of the organizational structure of the Biennale – since its inception in 2013. Biennale College Cinema discovers and mentors 12 feature films projects presented by first and/or second time directors and rising producers at a two-week workshop in Venice. Each year up to 4 projects get fully financed with a $200K grant and are set for a world premiere during the following Venice International Film Festival.

Photo: Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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