There are evenings that are carefully programmed, and there are evenings that acquire a life of their own. On Monday, 7 September 2026, at Palazzina Grassi in Venice, the inaugural LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA became the latter. Presented by Liberatum in partnership with the Pure Land Foundation, the gathering took place during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival and marked twenty-five years of Liberatum.
Twenty-five years devoted to the belief that culture can be a meeting point between worlds, disciplines and ways of seeing. The evening began with a question rather than a celebration: what does human dignity mean?
Moderated by Bruno Wang, founder of the Pure Land Foundation, a conversation between Lee Daniels, Marisa Berenson and Nadine Labaki explored the subject through the very different lenses of cinema, art, memory and lived experience. It was a fitting beginning for a programme conceived around a shared belief: that culture, contemplation and storytelling can deepen our understanding of life and of one another.
The Pure Land Foundation approaches these questions through education, dialogue, spirituality, wellbeing and original content, engaging with some of the most enduring and difficult questions of contemporary existence: meaning, identity, suffering, belonging, and the search for a more conscious way of living.
Liberatum has long approached culture as a space in which such questions can be encountered collectively. In Venice, these two sensibilities came together. And then came the magic of poems. Sevdaliza, the Iranian singer and songwriter, offered a poetry recital on the power of music and words. Her presence shifted the atmosphere from conversation towards something more elemental: the recognition that not everything we need to understand can be articulated through ideas alone. This, perhaps, is where art begins.
The Liberatum Pioneer Awards, designed by Russian artist and sculptor Svetlana K-Liée, followed, honouring three artists whose work has expanded the possibilities of their respective fields: Nadine Labaki, Lee Daniels and Marina Abramović. There was nothing conventional about the tributes. Rossy de Palma opened the proceedings for Labaki with her characteristic flair. Blending Arabic words with Spanish humour, she celebrated the Lebanese filmmaker with warmth, irreverence and affection. It was a reminder that recognition need not always be solemn; admiration can also be playful, intimate and deeply personal.
Debi Mazar brought a different energy to the tribute to Daniels. With the wit and candour associated with her New York sensibility, she recalled vivid memories from his past, filling the room with laughter while revealing something more tender beneath the stories. Daniels, visibly moved, seemed to receive not simply an award, but the accumulated affection of people who had travelled alongside him.
The evening reached its crescendo as Marisa Berenson delivered a passionate tribute to Marina Abramović. Abramović, characteristically, had the last word, and turned mortality into comedy. Accepting her award, she joked that she very much hoped receiving the Liberatum Pioneer Award did not mean she was getting any closer to death’s door. The room erupted in laughter. It was the perfect ending. Because beneath the glamour, the awards and the extraordinary constellation of creative minds gathered in Venice, the evening was ultimately about something surprisingly simple: being alive together.
There were profound conversations and ridiculous laughter. There were memories, vulnerability, performance and friendship. Serious questions were allowed to coexist with joy. The intellectual sat beside the instinctive; the spiritual beside the irreverent. This sense of openness was reflected in the gathering itself. Serbian, Iranian, French, Lebanese, Colombian, Russian, Spanish, American, Italian and Indian artists and filmmakers came together in Venice. Different languages, histories and traditions sharing the same room. That diversity was not incidental. It was very much the point.
For Liberatum, bringing people together across borders has always carried both privilege and responsibility. To convene is to create the possibility of encounter; to create an encounter is to create the possibility of changing how we see. And perhaps that is what culture can still do at its most powerful. Not provide answers, necessarily, but create the conditions in which better questions can be asked. Not tell us what to think, but remind us to remain curious. Not eliminate our differences, but allow us to experience them without fear.
In Venice, a city built on crossings, between water and land, East and West, past and future, LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA offered its own kind of crossing. It brought cinema into conversation with spirituality, art with philosophy, memory with mortality, and achievement with the simple pleasure of being in a room together. The result was an evening of extraordinary warmth and unusual depth. An evening that, long after the awards were presented and the lights of Palazzina Grassi faded into the Venetian night, left behind a feeling that may be harder to name but easier to remember: that culture, at its best, does not merely reflect the human experience. It draws us deeper into it.
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