Liberatum Turns Twenty-Five With Its First Night Of Art And Cinema In Venice

Liberatum turned twenty-five this September, and marked the occasion in Venice, a city that rarely needs an excuse for spectacle but always makes room for one. The organisation staged the inaugural edition of LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, a new multidisciplinary programme built around its Pioneer Awards. This year those went to Serbian artist Marina Abramović, American filmmaker Lee Daniels and Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, three careers that have run close to five decades apiece and, in Liberatum's words, pushed at the edges of what their disciplines could hold.

The award itself is a newer invention. Liberatum introduced it in 2023 in Salvador, Brazil, where Angela Bassett and anthropologist Ivete Sacramento were the first to receive it. Ellen Burstyn was honoured in Venice in 2024, on the same trip that marked her first ever appearance at the festival, at Liberatum's invitation. This year the festival returned the favour, giving Burstyn its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Abramović's citation went back to the 1970s, when she began treating performance art as a discipline with a grammar of its own rather than a branch of visual art. That work has kept paying off: in 2026 she became the first living woman artist to get a major solo exhibition at Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia, an institution with a history stretching past 250 years. Daniels was recognised for a filmography, Precious, The Butler and Empire among them, that has spent years pushing Black life and trauma into mainstream American film and television. Labaki's citation pointed to Capernaum and Where Do We Go Now?, films that carried Lebanon's stories of displacement and conflict to audiences far beyond the region.

The room itself looked like a fairly typical night for Liberatum. Founder Pablo Ganguli was there, as were former Missoni president Angela Missoni, actress Debi Mazar, filmmaker Jessica Mitrani, actor and director Nadiv Molcho, footballer Achraf Lazaar and photographer Lodovico Colli di Felizzano. Spanish actress and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Rossy de Palma joined the artistic programme, one of several international voices Liberatum brought in from across Europe and the Americas, while actress Marisa Berenson and Linda Klee Messerklinger were also present. Indian filmmaker Mozez Singh, whose credits include Zubaan and the series Human, rounded out the guest list, along with entrepreneur Rohini Iyer, the only representative from India's business world present. Liberatum has promised the full programme, venues and screenings included, closer to the festival's next edition.