'Rule 34' Brazilian Drama On Defending Women Against Abuse Wins Golden Leopard

The 75th Locarno festival's last day, August 13, saw the announcement of the prizes. The film festival's main international competition saw Brazilian filmmaker Julia Murat's most recent film, Rule 34, win the Golden Leopard award.

Simone, a young legal student who develops a love for representing women in abuse cases, is the focus of the movie. She nevertheless enters a world of sensuality and violence due to her own sexual impulses.

Rule 34 Wins Golden Leopard

After Pendular, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2017 Berlinale, Rule 34 is Murat's third feature film. Found Memories, the director's debut film, made its Venice premiere.

The director and producer will each receive CHF 75,000 as part of the Locarno Golden Leopard award. The movie was produced by Tatiana Leite and Murat.

The jury for this year's Golden Leopard competition included Italian director Laura Samani, British director Prano Bailey-Bond, French director Alain Guiraudie, American producer William Horberg, and Swiss producer Michel Merkt.

Alessandro Comodin's Gigi la legge, an Italian film about a rural traffic cop whose life is changed after a little girl throws herself under a train, won the CHF 30,000 Special Jury Prize of the Cities of Ascona and Losone.

In Christina Tynkevych's play, How is Katia?, in which she portrays a single mother attempting to give her daughter Katia a brighter future, Anastasia Karpenko of Ukraine won the award for best actress in the category.

Brazilian filmmaker Julia Murat, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1979, also creates experimental videos, video installations, and television commercials. She earned degrees in both graphic design and screenwriting from the Darcy Ribeiro Film School and the Rio de Janeiro University.

She produced Father's Day, a full-length documentary, in 2008, and Stories Only Exist When Remembered, a full-length fiction film, which had its Venice premiere in 2011.

Every year in August, the Swiss town of Locarno hosts the Locarno Film Festival. The 1946-founded festival screens movies in both competitive and non-competitive categories, with programming for feature-length narrative, documentary, short, avant-garde, and retrospective films. There are 8,000 seats available for spectators outside where the Piazza Grande portion is hosted.

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Golden Leopard, the festival's top honour, is given to the outstanding film in the International Competition. Aside from those, there are other honours like the Prix du Public and the Leopard of Honour for career achievement.