Golden Lion (Leone d’Oro)
Presented by	Venice Film Festival
Location	Venice
Country	Italy
First awarded	1949

Il Leone d’Oro (English: 'The Golden Lion') is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes. In 1970, a second Golden Lion was introduced; this is an honorary award for people who have made an important contribution to cinema.

The prize was introduced in 1949 as the Golden Lion of St. Mark (the winged lion which had appeared on the flag of the Venetian Republic).^[1] Previously, the equivalent prize was the Gran Premio Internazionale di Venezia (Grand International Prize of Venice), awarded in 1947 and 1948. Before that, from 1934 until 1942, the highest awards were the Coppa Mussolini (Mussolini Cups) for Best Italian Film and Best Foreign Film.

No Golden Lions were awarded between 1969 and 1979. According to the Biennale's official website, this hiatus was a result of the 1968 Lion being awarded to the radically experimental Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: Ratlos; the website says that the awards "still had a statute dating back to the fascist era and could not side-step the general political climate. Sixty-eight produced a dramatic fracture with the past."^[2]

Grand International Prize of Venice[link]

Golden Lion[link]

14 French films have been awarded the Golden Lion, more than that of any other nation. Of note is that Golden Lion awards tend to be presented to European men: 33 of the 54 winners were European men (including Soviet/Russian winners). However most of this bias is from before 1980: before this year only 3 of 21 winners were non-European. Since 1949 only a few women have ever won the Golden Lion for directing, Indian-born Mira Nair, U.S. born Sofia Coppola, German Margarethe von Trotta and Belgium's Agnès Varda, who both won more than two decades ago. Although numerous Americans have won honorary awards at the festival, Americans have only won the Golden Lion four times, with awards for John Cassavetes and Robert Altman (both times the awards were shared with other winners who tied), as well as Darren Aronofsky (the first sole American to win the award) and Sofia Coppola (the first American female to win the award).

Year	Title	Director	Country of origin
1949	Manon	Henri-Georges Clouzot	* France
1950	Justice Is Done (Justice est faite)	André Cayatte	France
1951	Rashōmon	Akira Kurosawa	* Japan
1952	Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits)	René Clément	France
1953	No award
1954	Romeo and Juliet	Renato Castellani	* Italy
1955	The Word (Ordet)	Carl Theodor Dreyer	Denmark
1956	No award[3]
1957	The Unvanquished (Aparajito)	Satyajit Ray	* India
1958	Rickshaw Man (Muhomatsu no issho)	Hiroshi Inagaki	Japan
1959	General della Rovere (Il generale della Rovere) (tie) The Great War (La grande guerra) (tie)	Roberto Rossellini Mario Monicelli	Italy  Italy
1960	The Crossing of the Rhine (Le passage du Rhin)	André Cayatte	France
1961	Last Year in Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad)	Alain Resnais	France
1962	Family Diary (Cronaca familiare) (tie) Ivan's Childhood (Ivanovo detstvo) (tie)	Valerio Zurlini Andrei Tarkovsky	Italy * Soviet Union
1963	Hands Over the City (Le mani sulla città)	Francesco Rosi	Italy
1964	Red Desert (Il deserto rosso)	Michelangelo Antonioni	Italy
1965	Sandra of a Thousand Delights (Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa)	Luchino Visconti	Italy
1966	The Battle of Algiers (La battaglia di Algeri)	Gillo Pontecorvo	Italy
1967	Beauty of the Day (Belle de jour)	Luis Buñuel	France
1968	Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed (Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: Ratlos)	Alexander Kluge	* West Germany
1969-79	No award
1980	Atlantic City (tie) Gloria (tie)	Louis Malle John Cassavetes	* Canada/ France * United States
1981	Marianne and Juliane (Die Bleierne Zeit)	Margarethe von Trotta	West Germany
1982	The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge)	Wim Wenders	West Germany
1983	First Name: Carmen (Prénom Carmen)	Jean-Luc Godard	France
1984	The Year of the Quiet Sun (Rok spokojnego slonca)	Krzysztof Zanussi	* Poland
1985	Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi)	Agnès Varda	France
1986	The Green Ray (Le rayon vert)	Éric Rohmer	France
1987	Au revoir, les enfants	Louis Malle	France
1988	The Legend of the Holy Drinker (La leggenda del santo bevitore)	Ermanno Olmi	Italy
1989	A City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi)	Hou Hsiao-Hsien	* Taiwan
1990	Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead	Tom Stoppard	* United Kingdom/ United States
1991	Urga	Nikita Mikhalkov	* Soviet Union
1992	The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu Ju da guan si)	Zhang Yimou	China
1993	Short Cuts (tie) Three Colours: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu) (tie)	Robert Altman Krzysztof Kieślowski	United States  France/ Poland
1994	Vive L'Amour (Ai qing wan sui) (tie) Before the Rain (tie)	Tsai Ming-liang Milčo Mančevski	Taiwan * Republic of Macedonia
1995	Cyclo (Xich lo)	Anh Hung Tran	France- Vietnam
1996	Michael Collins	Neil Jordan	* Ireland
1997	Fireworks (Hana-bi)	Takeshi Kitano	Japan
1998	The Way We Laughed (Così ridevano)	Gianni Amelio	Italy
1999	Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shao)	Zhang Yimou	China
2000	The Circle (Dayereh)	Jafar Panahi	* Iran
2001	Monsoon Wedding	Mira Nair	India/ United States/ Italy/ France/* Germany
2002	The Magdalene Sisters	Peter Mullan	Ireland
2003	The Return (Vozvrashcheniye)	Andrey Zvyagintsev	Russia
2004	Vera Drake	Mike Leigh	United Kingdom
2005	Brokeback Mountain	Ang Lee	United States
2006	Still Life (Sanxia haoren)	Jia Zhangke	China
2007	Lust, Caution (Se, jie)	Ang Lee	United States/ China/ Taiwan
2008	The Wrestler	Darren Aronofsky	United States
2009	Lebanon	Samuel Maoz	* Israel
2010	Somewhere	Sofia Coppola	United States
2011	Faust	Alexander Sokurov	Russia

*_{denotes first win}

Golden Lion – Honorary Award[link]

Repeat winners[link]

• André Cayatte (1950; 1960)
• Louis Malle (1980; 1987)
• Zhang Yimou (1992; 1999)
• Ang Lee (2005; 2007)

See also[link]

Film portal

• Leone d’Argento (Silver Lion)
• Palme d'Or, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival
• Golden Bear, the highest prize awarded at the Berlin Film Festival

References[link]

External links[link]

• La Biennale di Venezia official website