The UNIMED jury of the 79° Venice International Film Festival assigned the “UNIMED Award 2022” to the movie “Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades”, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
The UNIMED Award, launched in 2017, is a collateral prize to the Venice International Film Festival, resulting from the collaboration between UNIMED and La Biennale di Venezia.
Every year an international jury made up of students coming from UNIMED associated universities meets in Venice to watch all the competing movies and assign the prize to the movie which most conveys UNIMED’s core values.
The award was established in memory of Prof. Franco Rizzi, former Secretary General and founder of UNIMED, for his lifelong and career commitment to improve cooperation between Euro-Mediterranean universities.
Indeed, since its foundation, UNIMED has always been committed to use education as a global force and a mutual understanding vehicle. For that purpose, the UNIMED Award promotes the understanding between peoples of different cultures and religious beliefs, it fights racism and discrimination, revealing the complex causes of violence and demonstrating the successful mastering of conflicts.
The aim of the UNIMED Award is to promote cultural exchanges between students and highlight the value of the intercultural exchange, freedom of expression, mutual respect and understanding of differences.
This year, the jury involved the following students:
- Ilaria Romani, as a tutor, from the International University of Rome, Italy
- Giada Andreoletti & Magda Adrezejewska from the International University of Rome, Italy
- Eduardo Abellan Martinez & Manuel Benitez Cadiz from Murcia University, Spain
- Nicolò Canestrelli & Pier Francesco Coscia from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy
- Senna Vodzogbe & Miika Suonpera from Tampere University, Finland
- Virginia Ceccato & Giulia D’Angioli from the University Ca Foscari, Italy
- Guillem Villalonga & Albert Muns from the University of Barcelona, Spain
- Martina Guerra & Silvia Lanfredi from the University of Pavia, Italy
- Nabila Toscano & Anastasia Giannuzzi from the University of Salento, Italy
The jury motivated its choice as follows:
“Iñárritu achieves a very interesting balance between the narcissistic exercise and the self-critique, putting his cultural roots and the privilege of being an influential artist under the spotlight. The director inserts himself shamelessly into the film, presenting us a powerful point of view about the complex relationship between Mexican and American cultural identities.
Silverio portraits the internal dilemma that immigrants who look for better life conditions in another country may face. Becoming a successful journalist gets him closer to the life he wanted for himself, but it creates a distance with the Mexican origins he hypocritically wants to pass on to his children. Silverio and his family have to face the plain rejection from the country where they live and the one they left behind. The long-takes and the vivid images create a dreamlike state and guide the spectator inside Silverio’s mind, sharing with us the surreal condition of “bardo” he is experiencing.”
The final ceremony was held on September 9th at the Italian Pavillon in Venice.
The Award, made with a metal core, plaster, gauze and linen, in addition to pure gold and copper leaf, was conceived by the artist Maurizio Radici and kindly offered by PDG Arte Communications, curator of several external pavilions of the Biennale Arte.
The artist, Maurizio Radici, was born in the province of Brescia in 1958. He graduated in graphics and architecture and in the 1980s he attended the Academy of Carrara and of Fine Arts in Bergamo, having the opportunity to be taught by well-known Italian masters, including Italo Ghilardi. From an early age, his world was particularly attentive to art and painting techniques and certainly his father, who was a very successful colorist chemist, transmitted to his son a deep knowledge of the subject. Radici is an artist who has made painting his full-time job.
Since he was a boy, he devoted himself to painting and sculpture and gained a great deal of experience in advertising graphics as an artistic director. He has made countless exhibitions in Italian and international museums and galleries: Milan, Stuttgart, New York, Bergamo, Rimini, Macerata, Ancona, Bologna, Brescia, Naples, Genoa, Cagliari, Venice, London, Amsterdam, Rome, Collinas, Gambettola ( Cesena Forlì).
