The film Happening, a sensitively told story about a young student who falls pregnant, won the Venice International Film Festival’s top prize at the end of a glamorous, socially distanced awards gala last night. Directed by Audrey Diwan, it is based on the book of the same name by Annie Ernaux and is set in the 1960s. “I feel heard! I did this movie with my belly, my heart, my guts, and my head,” Diwan, who is French, told the audience at the close of an evening that brought women’s experience to the foreground. The director invited the film’s 22-year old French-Romanian star, Anamaria Vartolomei, up on to the stage with her to collect the prize.

Announcing the award, chairman of the prize jury Bong Joon-ho said. “We jury members dearly loved this film. It was unanimous.”

The film fought off stiff competition from more than a handful of equally popular contenders for this year’s Golden Lion. Among those others judged most likely to take the prestigious award were Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter, starring Olivia Colman and adapted from an Elena Ferrante novel. Gyllenhaal also wrote the screenplay, for which she was handed the top writing award by jury member and British actress Cynthia Erivo. Paying tribute to Italy, where she was married and where she first came across Ferrante’s work, Gyllenhaal said she felt that women had been “born into an agreement to be silent and Ferrante had broken the agreement”. Her film was actually largely shot in lockdown on a Greek Island.

Jane Campion’s 1920s Western The Power of the Dog, with its highly praised performance from Benedict Cumberbatch, was also a well received entry; Campion was awarded the Silver Lion for best director. Thanking Cumberbatch, she said the actor went “around the world and back again to find this character”.

Veteran filmmaker Paul Schrader was another favourite this year, his entry a hard-bitten story, The Card Counter, starring Oscar Isaac as a former Abu Ghraib torturer.

Also in the running – and still likely to make waves – was a vision of life inside the British Royal Family called Spencer, directed by Pablo Larraín, starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana and providing a witty alternative version to The Crown.

The best actress award, for which Stewart and Colman were both in the running, finally went to Cruz for her performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers. The Spanish actress thanked the director, her longtime collaborator, for his “impeccable work ethic”, adding “You have created magic again. I adore you”. Cruz dedicated the award to her family, to her own mother and to her late mother-in-law, Javier Bardem’s mother.

Best actor was John Arcilla for his performance On the Job: The Missing 8 and the Grand Jury prize went to Paolo Sorrentino, the revered Italian filmmaker, for The Hand of God.

A particularly popular winner on the night, especially for fans of the hit Netflix series Call My Agent, was French actress Laure Calamy, who netted the best actress prize in the Orizzonti, or parallel competition. Her gushing and excitable acceptance speech could well have come from Noemie, her effusive character in the series. She won for her role in Eric Gravel’s Full Time, a film that also won him best director in the section.

Many of the biggest names in world cinema had gathered on The Lido for this, the 78th edition of the oldest film festival around, to celebrate the artform that has helped keep many people entertained during the challenges of the last year-and-a-half.

Cruz, dressed in a shimmering silver gown, arrived to shouts of her name that came from every direction. The dinner-jacketed banks of photographers were desperate to catch the attention of one of the big stars of the night. Cruz followed jury members into the auditorium. Led by Korean director Bong, of Parasite, Snowpiercer and Okja fame, they included Erivo and the director Chloé Zhao, who won last years Lion with her Oscar-winning film Nomadland.

A special prize was awarded to Il Buco, a film about cave exploration in Calabria in the 1960s from director Michelangelo Frammartino.