Corsage, Marie Kreutzer’s period drama starring Vicky Krieps, has won the top honor at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival.
The film, which first bowed in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard sidebar (where Krieps won for best performance) and is now Austria’s entry to the Academy Awards, claim the best film award from the official competition, announced on Oct. 16 ahead of the festival’s closing night drama.
The jury said that the “masterfully realized” film won for its “for its mesmerizing and original interpretation of the life of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth,” adding that it had been “completely seduced by Vicky Krieps’ sublime performance of a woman out of time trapped in her own iconography and her rebellious yearning for liberation.”
In response, Kreutzer said the award was for “everyone on my team,” claiming that “the most beautiful thing about my job is to collaborate with so many great creatives and artists and create something together day by day without knowing how it will turn out.” She added: “For all of us I’m so happy that it turned out so well and that people love the film so much.”
The official competition jury also said it wanted to “commend the pure cinematic language and formal mastery of Godland and for the immersive atmosphere it creates.”
Elsewhere, Manuela Martelli won the Sutherland Award in the first feature competition for her Chilean drama 1976, Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes won the Grierson Award in the documentary completion, and Charlie Shackleton’s As Mine Exactly won in the immersive art and XR award. I Have No Legs, And I Must Run by Yue Li won the short film award. In the audience categories, Blue Bag Life won the feature audience award and Drop Out won the short audience award.
The 2022 BFI London Film Festival draws to a close on Oct. 16 with the European premiere of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
