La vita è breve ma la giornata è lunghissima

The 61st annual Venice International Film Festival, was held from 1 and 11 September 2004, at Venice Lido in Italy. British filmmaker John Boorman was the jury president for the main competition. The Golden Lion was awarded to Vera Drake, directed by Mike Leigh. On this edition, a new independent section, Venice Days (Giornate degli autori), was created "for free cinema, new talents and new stories". This section is organized by the ANAC (National Association of Cinematographic Authors) and the API (Independent Authors & Producers). Also in this edition, The Secret History of Italian Cinema was launched, a new official retrospective section, with the aim of restoring and systematically rediscovering sides of the Italian cinema that have been "forgotten, invisible, unknown or misunderstood". The retrospective was planned for the following four editions (61st to 64th editions), later was extended with the These Phantoms: Italian Cinema Rediscovered (65th edition), and the Italian Comedy Retrospective (66th edition). The Fondazione Prada was the main sponsor/partner of this section. The festival opened with The Terminal by Steven Spielberg, and closed with Steamboy by Katsuhiro Otomo.