'Father Mother Sister Brother' wins top prize at the Venice Film Festival

VENICE, Italy (AP) — “Father Mother Sister Brother,” Jim Jarmusch’s quietly humorous relationship triptych, won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival Saturday. The film about the relationships between adult children, and with their parents, stars Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett.

It was an upset win over some of the festival’s bigger hits, including “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won the runner-up award, and Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice,” which left empty-handed.

“All of us here who make films are not motivated by competition,” Jarmusch said. “But I truly appreciate this unexpected honor.”

He thanked the festival for “appreciating our quiet film.” He said he related to Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who once said, while accepting an honor from the Academy Awards at an advanced age, that he was worried he still didn’t know what he was doing.

“I’m learning each time,” Jarmusch said.

Kaouther Ben Hania’s devastating Gaza docudrama “The Voice of Hind Rajab” won the Silver Lion, the runner-up prize. The film is about attempt to rescue a 6-year-old girl from a bullet ridden call in Gaza City in January 2024 and uses the real audio from her call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

The film premiered later in the festival, but its impact was not dulled. It received a 22-minute standing ovation after its premiere. She dedicated her award to the Red Crescent and “to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are the real heroes.”

Ben Hania in her remarks also called for an end to “this unbearable situation” in Gaza.

“Enough is enough,” she said.

She added: "The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real, until justice is served.”

The Alexander Payne-led jury named Chinese actor Xin Zhilei best actress for leading Cai Shangjun’s “The Sun Rises on Us All,” a story about a love triangle set in the world of sweatshops in Guangzhou. Italian actor Toni Servillo won best actor for playing a president at the end of his term in Paolo Sorrentino's “La Grazia.”

Benny Safdie took the best director prize for his Mark Kerr MMA biopic “The Smashing Machine,” which has kicked off Oscar buzz for its star, Dwayne Johnson.

“I never thought I’d be up here,” Safdie said. “To be here amongst the giants of the past and the giants here this year, it just blows my mind.”

He also thanked his subject, Kerr, and his stars Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson.

“You truly performed with no net, and we jumped off a cliff together,” Safdie said of Johnson.

Valérie Donzelli and Gilles Marchand were recognized with best screenplay for their gig economy drama “At Work,” a French film about a successful photographer who gives up everything to focus on writing, and ends up in poverty.

The special jury prize went to Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi for his lyrical Naples documentary “Below the Clouds.”

They also singled out Swiss actor Luna Wedler with the Marcello Mastroianni Award, which goes to a young actor, for her turn in the film “Silent Friend,” a poetic three-part story about a ginkgo tree in a medieval university town in Germany.

“Nebraska” filmmaker Payne presided over the main competition jury, which included Brazilian actor Fernanda Torres, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, French director Stéphane Brizé, Italian director Maura Delpero, Chinese actor Zhao Tao and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. The international group selected a particularly diverse batch of winners.

Winners for the horizons sidebar, a discovery section led by French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, were announced first. “En El Camino,” about the world of long-haul trucking in Mexico from filmmaker David Pablos, won best film. Anuparna Roy was emotional accepting the best director prize for her debut feature, “Songs of Forgotton Trees,” about two migrant women in Mumbai.

Roy, who is Indian, devoted part of her remarks to the conflict in Gaza.

“Every child deserves peace, freedom, liberation, and Palestine is no exception,” Roy said. “I stand beside Palestine. I might upset my country but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

Armani Beauty’s audience award winning filmmaker Maryam Touzani (“Calle Málaga”) also used her remarks to spotlight Gaza.

“How many mothers have been made childless,” she said. “How many more until this horror is brought to an end? We refuse to lose our humanity.”

“Aftersun” filmmaker Charlotte Wells handed out the debut film prize to Nastia Korkia for “Short Summer,” who spoke about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Her film is a loosely autobiographical account of a child living with her grandparents during the Chechen war.

“I very much hope that we will keep our eyes wide-open and that we will find the strength to stop the war,” Korkia said.

The ceremony also included a tribute to the late Giorgio Armani, who died Thursday, with a standing ovation from the audience. Armani Beauty is a longtime sponsor of the festival.

“Thank you, Giorgio Armani, for teaching us that creativity lives in the spaces where disciplines meet - fashion, cinema, art, new materials, architecture - just as happens every day here at the Venice Biennale,” Italian architect Carlo Ratti said.

This year’s main competition lineup included many possible Oscar heavyweights, though most of Hollywood's flashiest offerings came up short at the awards. Kathryn Bigelow set off a warning shot about nuclear weapons and the apparatus of decision-making with her urgent, and distressingly realistic, thriller “A House of Dynamite.”

Guillermo del Toro unveiled his “Frankenstein,” a sumptuously gothic interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic, with Oscar Isaac portraying Victor Frankenstein as a romantic madman and Jacob Elodri, naive and raw, as the monster. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons were strange and fierce as kidnapped and kidnapper in Yorgos Lanthimos’s provocative “Bugonia.” While they didn't prevail at the festival's awards, the films could still go on to be in the broader awards conversation.

Since 2014, the Venice Film Festival has hosted four best picture winners, including “The Shape of Water,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight” and “Nomadland.” Last year, they had several eventual Oscar-winning films in the lineup, including Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” which won three including best actor for Adrien Brody, Walter Salles’ best international feature winner “I’m Still Here,” and the animated short “In the Shadow of the Cypress.”

The previous Golden Lion winner, Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut “The Room Next Door,” a smash at Venice with an 18-minute standing ovation, received no Oscar nominations.

For more coverage of the 2025 Venice Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/venice-film-festival

Benny Safdie accepts the Silver Lion for best director for 'The Smashing Machine' during the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)

Director Kaouther Ben Hania, winner of the grand jury prize for 'The Voice of Hind Rajab', poses for photographers at the awards photo call during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Director Jim Jarmusch, winner of the Golden Lion for best film for 'Father Mother Sister Brother', poses for photographers at the awards photo call during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Jim Jarmusch poses for photographers upon arrival at the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Xin Zhilei accepts the Coppa Volpi award for best actress for 'The Sun Rises on Us All' during the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)

Xin Zhilei poses for photographers upon arrival at the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Anuparna Roy accepts the Orizzonti best director award for 'Songs of the Forgotten Trees' during the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)

Benny Safdie poses for photographers upon arrival at the awards ceremony of the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)

Jacob Elordi poses for photographers at the red carpet for the film 'Frankenstein' during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Director Guillermo del Toro poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Frankenstein' during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)

Director Kathryn Bigelow poses for photographers at the red carpet for the film 'A House of Dynamite' during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Emma Stone poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film 'Bugonia' during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Dwayne Johnson poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film 'The Smashing Machine' during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A convicted murderer is challenging an Australian state’s ban on prisoners eating Vegemite, claiming in a court suit that withholding the polarizing yeast-based spread breaches his human right to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”

Andre McKechnie, 54, took his battle for the salty, sticky, brown byproduct of brewing beer to the Supreme Court of Victoria, according to documents the court registry released to The Associated Press on Tuesday. He is suing Victoria’s Department of Justice and Community Safety and the agency that manages the prisons, Corrections Victoria. The case is scheduled for trial next year.

McKechnie is seeking a court declaration that the defendants denied him his right under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”

He also wants a declaration that the defendants breached the Corrections Act by “failing to provide food adequate to maintain” McKechnie’s “well-being.”

He wants the court to order the decision to ban Vegemite to be “remade in accordance with the law.”

Vegemite has been banned from Victorian prisons since 2006, with Corrections Victoria saying it “interferes with narcotic detection dogs.”

Inmates used to smear packages of illicit drugs with Vegemite in the hope that the odor would distract the dogs from the contraband.

Vegemite also contains yeast, which is banned from Victorian prisons because of its “potential to be used in the production of alcohol,” the contraband list says.

Manufactured in Australia since 1923 as an alternative to Britain’s Marmite, Vegemite was long marketed as a source of vitamin B for growing children.

The spread is beloved by a majority of Australians, but typically considered an acquired taste at best by those who weren’t raised on it.

The last U.S. president to visit Australia, Barack Obama, once said: “It’s horrible.”

Australian band Men at Work aroused international curiosity about the yeast-based spread when they mentioned a “Vegemite sandwich” in their 1980s hit “Down Under.”

The band's lead singer Colin Hay once accused American critics of laying Vegemite on too thick, blaming a “more is more” U.S. culture.

It’s a favorite on breakfast toast and in cheese sandwiches, with most fans agreeing it's best applied sparingly. Australian travelers bemoan Vegemite's scarcity overseas.

The Australian government intervened in April when Canadian officials temporarily prevented a Toronto-based cafe from selling Vegemite in jars and on toast in a dispute media branded as “Vegemite-gate.” Canadians relented and allowed the product to be sold despite its failure to comply with local regulations dealing with food packaging and vitamin fortification.

The Department of Justice and Community Safety and Corrections Victoria declined to comment on Tuesday. Government agencies generally maintain it is not appropriate to comment on issues that are before the courts.

Victims of crime advocate and lawyer John Herron said it was a frivolous lawsuit and was offensive to victims’ families.

“As victims, we don’t have any rights. We have limited if any support. It’s always about the perpetrator, and this just reinforces that,” said Herron, whose daughter Courtney Herron, was beaten to death in a Melbourne park in 2019. Her killer was found not guilty of murder by reason of mental impairment.

“It’s not a case of Vegemite or Nutella or whatever it may be. It’s an extra perk that is rubbing our faces in the tragedy that we’ve suffered,” Herron added.

McKechnie is currently held at maximum-security Port Phillip Prison. He was 23 years old when he stabbed to death wealthy Gold Coast property developer Otto Kuhne in Queensland state in 1994.

He was sentenced to life for murder and transferred a decade later from the Queensland to the Victorian prison system.

He wrote last year that he spent eight years free on parole in Victoria before he "decided that I had had enough.” He returned to prison and has spent the past decade in custody.

McKechnie’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

A piece of toast is prepared with Vegemite in Sydney, Australia, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)