Golden Osella

• 1. Introduction

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  The Golden Osella takes its name from a silver medallion that the Doges of Venice once pressed into the hands of distinguished citizens, its surface engraved with the Doge's own likeness or scenes drawn from Venetian life. That tradition stretches back to the 15th century, when the Doge distributed these commemorative medals to members of the Maggior Consiglio. Centuries later, the Venice Film Festival borrowed that gesture and turned it into one of cinema's more quietly prestigious honors. What kind of award is it, exactly? Who does it recognize, and why did it vanish for nearly a decade before returning in a different form?

• 2. Birth of an Award

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  The Golden Osella was introduced in 1987 as part of the 44th Venice International Film Festival. The first winners included Luciano Ricceri, Nana Cecchi, Sten Holmberg, David Mamet, and Richard Robbins, honored for their contributions to films including The Gold Rimmed Glasses, Hip Hip Hurrah!, House of Games, and Maurice. That inaugural year set the tone for what the award was designed to do: recognize not just directors, but the full range of craft behind a film. Screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, production designers, costume designers, and composers all became eligible, making the Golden Osella unusually broad in scope compared to most festival prizes. The official jury selected recipients from films in the main competition, tying the award to the festival's highest tier of programming.

• 3. A Decade of Interruption

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  From 1999 to 2003, no Golden Osella was presented. The festival did not abandon craft recognition entirely during those years. Screenplay awards went to One Hundred Steps in 2000 and Y tu mamá también in 2001, and technical awards were given to Far from Heaven in 2002 and Good Morning, Night in 2003. Yet these were granted outside the Golden Osella framework. When the award returned in 2004, the festival marked the occasion with something unusual: a Special Golden Osella presented to Studio Ghibli for Howl's Moving Castle. That remains the only time the award was given to a production studio rather than to individual filmmakers. The gap and the unconventional return suggest the festival was still working out what the award should be.

• 4. Films That Won Twice

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  Deep Crimson holds a singular distinction in the award's history: it is the only film to have received three Golden Osella awards. Female screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego won for her screenplay, and technical contributors Mónica Chirinos, Marisa Pecanins, and Sylvie Olivé were also honored for their work on that film. The Gold Rimmed Glasses is the only other film to claim multiple Golden Osellas, having won two. Two films, Three Colours: Blue and Lust, Caution, achieved something rarer still: winning both the Golden Osella and the Venice Golden Lion, the festival's top prize. Those double wins placed both films in a small group that earned the festival's recognition across multiple dimensions.

• 5. Women Behind the Camera

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  As of 2012, only four women had won the Golden Osella for screenplay writing: Sooni Taraporevala for Mississippi Masala, Cuca Canals for The Tit and the Moon, Paz Alicia Garciadiego for Dry Cleaning, and Anne Fontaine for Deep Crimson. A separate thread of recognition runs through the award's technical categories. Nana Cecchi, Dominique Auvray, Mónica Chirinos, Marisa Pecanins, and Sylvie Olivé were all honored for technical contributions, their work spanning films from The Gold Rimmed Glasses to No Fear, No Die to Mr. Nobody. Nana Cecchi appears in both contexts, having been among the first winners in 1987. The pattern across screenplay and technical categories points to the award's consistent reach across different kinds of filmmaking craft.

• 6. The End and What Followed

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  The Golden Osella was last awarded in 2012. Daniele Ciprì received it for his work on It Was the Son, and Olivier Assayas received it for Something in the Air. Starting the following year, the Venice Film Festival moved to a different format for recognizing screenwriters: a metal lion, shaped and named in the tradition of the festival's main prizes, rather than the osella form. That shift ended a run of over two decades in which the medallion's distinctive shape and its connection to Venetian history set the award apart from most festival prizes. The osella that Doges once distributed by hand had, in its cinematic form, honored work in direction, screenplay, cinematography, production design, costume design, music, and editing across more than twenty years of Venice competitions.