Venice gave no Golden Lion at all for over a decade after 1968
From 1969 to 1979 the Venice Film Festival handed out no Golden Lions. The Biennale itself explains that its awards still ran under rules written in the fascist era, and after 1968 they could no longer ride out the political mood. The prize returned in 1980 and soon looked far beyond Europe.
The festival's early top honour carried an uncomfortable name. Between 1934 and 1942 its leading award was the Coppa Mussolini, and in 1938 Leni Riefenstahl won it. In 1940 an antisemitic film made at Joseph Goebbels's request, Jud Suss, took the festival's Golden Crown. After the war the reborn festival gave its main prize to Jean Renoir's The Southerner in 1946, then a Grand International Prize in 1947 and 1948, the second going to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
The lion itself arrived in 1949, borrowed from the winged Lion of Saint Mark that symbolised the old Venetian Republic, and settled into its short name, Golden Lion, in 1954. An honorary version for lifetime achievement followed in 1971, rewarding people rather than individual films. The long gap began after the 1968 award was handed to a boldly avant-garde picture, in a year the Biennale calls a dramatic break with the past.
French films have won more often than those of any other country, and the roll of winners is still dominated by Europe: 33 of 54 have been European men. Before 1980 only three of 21 winners came from outside Europe. Since then Venice has been notably friendlier to Asian directors than Cannes. Ang Lee won twice in three years, once with an American film and once with a Chinese-language one, and Zhang Yimou also has two.
Only seven women have won for directing, among them Agnes Varda and Sofia Coppola. In 2019 Joker became the first film drawn from original comic-book characters to take the prize. From 2026, non-English-language winners qualify automatically for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
Source: Golden Lion
