Adrien Brody Is Overcome With Emotion as Brady Corbet’s Devastating Immigrant Story ‘The Brutalist’ Gets 12-Minute Venice Ovation

Brady Corbet‘s historical drama “The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce, wowed Venice Film Festival on Sunday with a 12-minute standing ovation.

Brody, who stars in the film as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor struggling to revive his career as an architect in the U.S., was overcome with emotion as the clapping raged on. The actor wiped tears away and held his head in his hands, repeatedly trying to direct the applause toward his director and co-stars, but the spotlight kept falling back on him.

The three-and-a-half hour drama, which included a 15-minute intermission, follows Brody’s character over nearly four decades as he immigrates to the U.S. and begins working for a rich but hot-headed man who wants to build a community center like no other. He helps Laslav reunite with his ailing wife (Jones) and begins to construct the brutalist building of his dreams, but a fateful incident changes both of their lives forever.

The cast also includes Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde, Isaach De Bankolé, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird and Peter Polycarpou. In addition to directing the film, Corbet also co-wrote the script with his wife Mona Fastvold (“The Sleepwalker”).

Actor-turned-director Corbet has premiered films at Venice twice before, with his 2015 directorial debut “The Childhood of a Leader” earning him the Luigi De Laurentiis award for best debut film and the Horizons best director prize and 2018’s “Vox Lux” competing for the Golden Lion. “The Brutalist” is also in the running for the festival’s prestigious top prize.

Teasing “The Brutalist” in an interview with Variety in July, Corbet revealed that the 215-minute, 70mm movie will include an intermission when it screens at Venice.

“I like the idea of them,” he said. “It gives everyone time to reset and no one has to stress about missing a scene to run to the bathroom, which is a legitimate concern on longer films. I would describe it as a rolling intermission. The movie doesn’t stop exactly. There will be images and sound and there is a timer to let the audience know how much time is left.”