Joker Wins Top Prize at Venice Film Festival

Tom Phillips’ Joker movie was the big winner at the Venice Film Festival, capturing the prestigious festival’s top prize. CineMasPod has video of the film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix, winning the Golden Lion at the festival as well as Phillips’ acceptance speech. You can see that video below.

The film has been a hit with critics, scoring an 86% so far on Rotten Tomatoes. The psychological thriller opens on October 4th and stars Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, and Brian Tyree Henry. The synopsis reads:

Forever alone in a crowd, Arthur Fleck seeks connection. Yet, as he trods the sooted Gotham City streets and rides the graffitied mass transit rails of a hostile town teeming with division and dissatisfaction, Arthur wears two masks. One, he paints on for his day job as a clown. The other he can never remove; it’s the guise he projects in a futile attempt to feel he’s a part of the world around him, and not the misunderstood man whom life is repeatedly beating down. Fatherless, Arthur has a fragile mother, arguably his best friend, who nicknamed him Happy, a moniker that’s fostered in Arthur a smile that hides the heartache beneath. But, when bullied by teens on the streets, taunted by suits on the subway, or simply teased by his fellow clowns at work, this social outlier only becomes even more out of sync with everyone around him.