George Clooney used his acceptance speech for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival to condemn “authoritarians who peddle fear” and urge audiences to recognise their shared humanity.
The 65-year-old actor received a prolonged standing ovation after speaking about the power of cinema to connect people across borders, languages and political divisions.
“Nobody laughs in a different language. Nobody cries in a different language. Parents worry the same, kids dream the same,” Clooney told the opening ceremony on Wednesday. “Love looks remarkably similar… which makes it hard to believe that we’re as different as we’re constantly being told.”
He said people in positions of power and wealth were encouraging the public to fear one another, but argued that films, books, music and journalism remained vital in resisting that message.
“The first people that authoritarians tried to shut down are not politicians,” he said. “They’re journalists who ask questions. They’re the artists who refuse simple answers; the filmmakers, writers, actors, and musicians who insist that someone you never met is deserving of your empathy.”
Clooney added that stories were dangerous to those who relied on fear, saying the people who opposed books, music and films were “never the heroes in history”.
“Movies don’t stop wars, they don’t lower inflation, they don’t fix elections, but they do something remarkable,” he said. “They remind us that a stranger is never a stranger, and that he might just be the hero in somebody else’s story.”
George Clooney attacks ‘cruel’ US administration
The Hollywood star had already delivered a sharp criticism of the US administration earlier in the day, describing those in charge as among “the least qualified people” and suggesting the country was currently experiencing a “kakistocracy” – a government run by the least qualified people.
“We’ve had some other difficult times but this is one of them,” Clooney said. “We will have an election in November that should be a check and balance and then in 2028, with any luck, we will have some restoration.”
He also condemned what he described as the disappearance of basic decency from public life, accusing the administration of embracing cruelty.
Clooney was referring to a post by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared an image from a cadet training centre in British Columbia that appeared to mock the physical appearance of a female Canadian soldier presenting a medal at a youth camp. Hegseth captioned the post: “This is real.”
“The idea that cruelty is the base, that being cruel and unkind is part of the fun of all this,” Clooney said. “Where is the sense of decency in all this? I’m ashamed of all of that but we will get through it and we will come out better on the other side.”
He compared the current political climate with the turmoil he witnessed in the United States in 1968, when cities were hit by widespread violence and the country lost civil rights leader Martin Luther King and senator Robert Kennedy.
“I’m old enough to have been through 1968 in the States when every city in the United States was set on fire,” he said. “There was tons of violence. The Capitol was surrounded with tanks. We’ve had some other difficult times, but this is one of them.”
A lifetime achievement award in Venice
The Golden Lion was presented to Clooney by his longtime friend Laura Dern, who starred alongside him in his first film, Grizzly II: Revenge.
In an official statement ahead of the ceremony, Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera praised Clooney as an actor, director and producer whose career had made a significant contribution to contemporary cinema.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, president of the festival jury, echoed Clooney’s argument that films could create empathy by exposing audiences to lives and viewpoints different from their own.
“I’m interested in having an interaction with something human, even if that human has a very different experience or point of view than I do,” she said.
Clooney has been a familiar presence at Venice for almost three decades. He first attended with Out of Sight, while the festival has also hosted his wedding to Amal Clooney and the premiere of Good Night, And Good Luck, the film he co-wrote and starred in and which earned him his first Oscar nomination for best director.
His return this year offered a real-life counterpart to his role in Jay Kelly, in which he plays a film star travelling to Italy to accept a lifetime achievement award.
