There were times when the 71st edition of the Venice Film Festival felt like it was slipping towards retirement. Facing stiff competition this year from younger, more sprightly North American cousins, artistic director Alberto Barbera admitted he wanted to premiere David Fincher's Gone Girl and Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, both snagged by the New York Film Festival. Yet while Venice is not the Hollywood port it once was, it's still leagues ahead of its rivals when it comes to promoting world cinema.
So it was fitting that Swedish auteur Roy Andersson walked away with the Golden Lion for A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence - a bizarrely comic odyssey that completed a loose trilogy following You, The Living (2007) and Songs from the Second Floor (2000). And this event even managed to overshadow the appearance, via Skype, of Danish director Lars von Trier at the press conference for the uncut Nymphomaniac Vol. II - uttering his first words to the media in more than three years.
Sadly, Andersson's triumph meant no top prize for Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary The Look of Silence, somewhat repeating his fate at this year's Oscars when The Act of Killing was overlooked in favour of 20 Feet from Stardom. A companion piece to that earlier film, which focused on the individuals involved in the anti-communist purge in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, this time it was relatives of the victims who did the confronting. A shocking, sickening work, the jury at least saw fit to award it the Grand Jury Prize.
Among the Asian films to catch my attention was Peter Chan Ho-sun's out-of-competition entry Dearest, a harrowing tale of two divorcees (Huang Bo, Hao Lei) who face every parent's nightmare: their young child Pengpeng is kidnapped. Based on a true story, the first half is pure melodrama and dread. But Chan demonstrates admirable bravery at the halfway point, flipping the film on its head and sending it into morally complex territory.
From Japan came Fires on the Plain, the latest work by Shinya Tsukamoto, the cult auteur best known for his cyber-punk Tetsuo trilogy. Fires on the Plain follows the fate of Japanese soldiers in the Philippines at the tail-end of the second world war.
Closing the festival was Ann Hui On-wah's historical biopic The Golden Era - detailing the life of 20th-century writer Xiao Hong. The three-hour running time of this impressionistic account (with Tang Wei playing the writer) will test even the most patient viewers. But there can be no doubting the elegance and humanity on show.