Kaadan won her second award from the event, following 'The Day I Lost My Shadow' in 2018.
Venice International Film Festival has awarded Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan Armani Beauty Audience Award at the 79th edition for her film Nezouh.
Syrian film starring Syrian actress Kinda Alloush and directed by Kaadan, premiered at Orizzonti Extra competition.
The Audience Award is given to the best film in the Orizzonti Extra section, now in its second year, with the support of the festival’s main sponsor, Armani Beauty.
“Proud to announce for the second time, my second fiction feature film won in Venice and this time it is the audience @armanibeauty award,” Kaadan wrote on Instagram.
The film takes place during the Syrian conflict, when a missile destroys the ceiling of the house of 14-year-old Zeina (Hala Zein). As a result, she sleeps for the first time under the stars and makes friends with Amer (Nizar Alani), the boy next door. When the violence escalates, Zeina’s mother, Hala, (Kinda Alloush) decides to leave. She puts up a fight with her husband Motaz (Samer Al Masri)who refuses to become a refugee and tries everything to stop his family from leaving his house.
Shot in Turkey, Nezouh is written and directed by Soudade Kaadan. It’s produced by KAF Productions (Soudade Kaadan) and Berkeley Media Group (Yu-Fai Suen) in association with Ex Nihilo (Marc Bordure).
Nezouh stars Kinda Alloush, Samer Al Masri, Hala Zein, Nizar Alani and Darina Al Joundi, and lensed by prominent cinematographer Hélène Louvart. Mad Solutions manages the film’s distribution in the Arab world while mk2 films is in charge of the film’s worldwide sales. Moreover, it is distributed in France by Pyramide and is financed through FILM4 and Stars Collective.
Born in France, Soudade Kaadan is a Syrian director who studied theatre criticism at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts and graduated from the Institut des Etudes Scénique, Audiovisuelles et cinématographiques (IESAV),
Meanwhile, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Laura Poitras’s epic documentary about photographer Nan Goldin and her activism against the Sackler family and their art connections, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival.
