JACQUELINE LENTZOU WINS BEST DIRECTOR AWARD AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2026

Jacqueline Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the 83rd Venice Film Festival for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, a film inspired by the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos.

The Greek filmmaker and ARTWORKS Fellow (2018) received one of the major distinctions of the Orizzonti competition with her second feature film, which had its world premiere in Venice. The film is in Greek, runs for 88 minutes and is a co-production between Greece, Germany and France.

The award carries particular significance for Greek cinema, recognising the directorial vision of a filmmaker with an established international presence in a story that brings together adolescence, memory, loss and sudden death with one of the events that marked contemporary Greece.

The Orizzonti Best Director Award

Orizzonti is one of the Venice Film Festival’s main competitive sections and is dedicated to new cinematic trends and different forms of storytelling.

Jacqueline Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, completing her first feature-film appearance at Venice with one of the section’s major prizes.

The Orizzonti jury was chaired by French filmmaker and actress Valérie Donzelli, alongside Peter Becker, Elizabeth Lo, David Pablos and Barbara Ronchi.

While accepting the award, Lentzou spoke about the difficulties of independent filmmaking and the creative risk involved in the project, closing her speech with the words “Stop killing children.”

Check out all the awards of the 83rd Venice Film Festival here