Lucrecia Martel Defends Her Jury Giving ‘Joker’ the Golden Lion, Calling it “Incredible”

Here’s a fun little interview with “Zama” director Lucrecia Martel. She’s currently in post-production on her elaborate documentary “Chocobar” which doesn’t look like it’ll be released this year.

Martel was also President of the Jury at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. If you remember, her jury caused quite a stir when they awarded “Joker” the Golden Lion and Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” the Grand Jury Prize (second place).

in the interview, Martel defends the ‘Joker’ win but says that it wasn’t her actual favorite film of that year’s competition:

“Joker” is incredible for that particular group of films. But my favorite was the Chinese film, an animated film […] “No.7 Cherry Lane”. When the vote was cast it was “Joker”, but I liked that Chinese film enormously.

Although the “Joker” win pissed off many people, especially in the United States, it was also well-merited. I still stand by the rave review I wrote at TIFF in 2019.

What else was in competition that year? Noteworthy films included Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy,” Gray’s “Ad Astra,” Andersson’s “About Endlessness,” Baumbach‘s “Marriage Story,” and Marcello’s “Martin Eden.”

As for Polanski’s win, Martel dodged the question, but she had already been asked about the controversial filmmaker four years ago in the middle of her Venice tenure:

I will not congratulate him, but I think it is correct that his movie is here at this festival, we have to develop our dialogue with him and this is the best possible place to go on with this type of discussion.

Martel goes on to slam Marvel movies, adding that she “tried” to watch “Black Widow,” which was a movie Disney had originally approached her to direct. She has also “tried” to watch other superhero movies, but was quickly turned off by them:

It turns out some of the Marvel films are available on planes so I’ve seen a few. I find the sound in them is absolutely in very poor taste, the visual effects and the sound of the effects. It’s the selection of the sounds that they’re connecting to the effects, which is actually very ugly. And the way the music is used is actually horrible.

I always expect Martel to entertain with the interviews she gives and this one is no exception.