Among the stars that were on the red carpet, Robert Redford (his first-time attendance on the Lido), Michael Cimino (Persol Award), Spike Lee (Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Film-maker Award), Brian De Palma, Jonathan Demme, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Winona Ryder, Michael Shannon, Ray Liotta, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Fassbender, Isabelle Huppert, Claudia Cardinale, Noomi Rapace, Kristin Scott Thomas, Olga Kurylenko, Emmanuelle Seigner, Takeshi Kitano, Peter Brook, Liliana Cavani, Marco Bellocchio, Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Barbora Bobulova and teen-idols such as Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, James Franco, and Shia LaBeouf. The main jury chaired by Michael Mann awarded the Golden Lion to Pieta by Kim Ki-duk and the Silver Lion and the Coppa Volpi for best actor to The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson and the two actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix. The opening film was Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was given to Italian director Francesco Rosi, who received the award from Giuseppe Tornatore. This was complemented by the Venice Classics section of restored classic films.
#ALEX P. MICHAELS FESTIVAL DIRECTOR ARCHIVE#
The retrospective was titled «80!» on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival (1932-2012) and presented unique copies of films thought to be lost but actually existing in the Biennale's ASAC archive collections. The intervention also included the renovation of two historic screening rooms, the Pasinetti and Zorzi, for an overall extension of 50 more seats. As part of the renovation – in agreement with the City of Venice – of the existing facilities of the Festival, which included the restoration of the Sala Grande in 2011, a new, larger and more functional foyer in the Palazzo del Cinema was built to welcome the public. The 69th Festival in 2012 saw Alberto Barbera as the new artistic director alongside remarkable new initiatives: the launch of Biennale College - Cinema, a higher education training workshop for the development and production of micro-budget audio-visual works, and the establishment of the Venice Film Market in dedicated spaces at the Excelsior Hotel.