Maria Aparicio wins top prize at Venice Days

Argentinian director Maria Aparicio has won the top prize at the Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori) section of the Venice Film Festival for her fourth feature film, ‘Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion’. The film, a co-production between Argentina and Spain, received the director’s award and a €20,000 prize to be shared between the filmmaker and the Spanish distributor, Paper Moon.

The drama follows Eva, a woman from Córdoba traveling through Madrid, who encounters Dante, an Argentinian historian researching labor struggles and Juan Bialet Massé at the Reina Sofía Museum. The film blends fiction with documentary elements to explore themes of solitude, identity, labor, and immigration.

The jury, led by Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, praised the work for its ability to merge the personal and the collective, noting its delicate portrayal of the solitude of the present through small gestures rather than large-scale events.