Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care Wins Top Prize At San…

The British filmmaker, passed over by Venice, picked up three awards for a film he now says will likely be his last.

Mike Leigh doesn't do overstatement, so when he tells you a film might be his last, you sit up. At San Sebastián's closing night on Saturday, his drama Tender Loving Care took the Golden Shell for Best Film, plus prizes for Best Screenplay and a shared Best Lead Performance win for Kate O'Flynn, fresh off an Emmy for Widow's Bay.

Neither Leigh nor O'Flynn showed up in person. Both sent video messages instead. Leigh kept his short: "Thank you, thank you and love to everybody." O'Flynn called the film one that treats empathy as strength, and dedicated the win to her co-stars Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson and Alice Bailey Johnson.

Jesson and Bailey Johnson picked up the screenplay award on Leigh's behalf and used the moment to push back on a familiar myth about his process, insisting there's real precision and rigor behind films people assume are improvised.

Variety reported that Tender Loving Care had been turned down for Venice's main competition. San Sebastián clearly didn't share that assessment. As for the retirement talk, Leigh addressed it plainly at a press conference earlier in the week, per The Hollywood Reporter: "It's a practical matter to do with my medical condition, a physical condition." He didn't elaborate further.

O'Flynn split her acting prize with Asta Kamma August, who plays one half of a young couple building a farm from scratch in Hans Petter Moland's Growth of the Soil. That film, Norway's official Oscar submission, also picked up Best Cinematography for Oskar Dahlsbakken.

Amanda Kernell won Best Director for Brace Your Heart, her portrait of a young Sámi reindeer herder, calling it an attempt to give voice to a culture under strain. Ah Biao's Border, a sexually explicit debut, took the Special Jury Prize, and Spain's Javier Cámara won Best Supporting Performance for 5 More Minutes.

The night's loudest cheer, unsurprisingly, went to a home team win. La Bola Negra, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's queer epic, scooped the Audience Award for Best Film a week after taking Toronto's People's Choice prize. It opened in Spanish theatres just a day before the ceremony and is already being talked up for the Oscar race. "It thrills me that people are once again saying, long live Spanish cinema," Calvo told the crowd.

A second audience prize, for Best European Film, went to Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's NAZA, their documentary on Israeli war crimes in Gaza that had already won a Jury Prize at Venice. It's the second straight year San Sebastián's audience has swung toward a pro-Palestinian title, following last year's win for The Voice of Hind Rajab. Several winners used their stage time to say so out loud, August pointing to a pin on her dress before adding, "free Palestine," and New Directors winner Naëmi Ada condemning what she called German state complicity.

Big names went home empty regardless. Fatih Akin's Ghost Song, Pablo Larraín's My Sad Dead, Fred Cavayé's Les Miserables and Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut all missed out. Whether Tender Loving Care picks up distribution and a proper theatrical run, or simply becomes the film Leigh quietly steps away on, is the next thing to watch.