Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere is one of the more anticipated fall/winter indie releases that, for whatever reason, did not end up playing at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. It did, however, premiere at the Venice Film Festival last week, where it ended up winning the festival’s top award: the coveted Golden Lion. The second place Silver Lion went to Alex de la Iglesia’s Balada Triste de Trompeta (The Last Circus), while Vincent Gallo won the Best Actor award for a dialogue-free role in Essential Killing. Many of the award winners came as surprises, particularly to local film critics, and now the festival’s jury president Quentin Tarantino is coming under fire for potentially showing favoritism in his selections. But is there any truth to this?

As some people may know, Quentin Tarantino and Sofia Coppola used to be an item back in in the mid-2000s, and although Coppola is now married to Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars, some people are using this as ammunition against QT’s decision. Tarantino’s friend Monte Hellman was also given a special career award. The general feeling seems to be that most of the films and performances that critics praised were not the ones that ended up getting recognition (such as Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan).

While I don’t doubt that there is politics involved in handing out awards at some of the bigger festivals, I also have a feeling that here it’s more a case of Tarantino’s taste in film being on a slightly different wavelength. Besides, if you’re going to pick jury members at film festivals who work and have friends in the industry, these kinds of conflicts of interest are going to be hard to avoid completely. Do you think Tarantino is in the wrong here? He has denied the accusations (obviously), but it’s unfortunate that something like this could tarnish Coppola’s win. All I know is that I’m now even more psyched to see it.