Afghan and Italian films
triumph at Rome film fest
DPA
Rome,
Nov 1 (DPA) Afghan director Siddiq Barmak's, Opium War, and
Italy's Giacomo Battiato's Resolution 819, about war crimes
in Bosnia, won top prizes at the International Rome Film Festival
Friday.
The
Golden Marc'Aurelio Critics Award for Best Film was bestowed
on Opium War, in which a pair of US helicopter pilots confront
the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan after their aircraft
is shot down.
The
Golden Marc'Aurelio Audience Award for Best Film - for which
visitors selected their favourite among this year's 20 films
in competition - went to Battiato's thriller.
Set
in the grim context of Balkan "ethnic cleansing,"
it deals with an investigator's attempt to uncover the truth
around the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
Italian
Donatella Finocchiaro won the Silver Marc'Aurelio Critics
Award for Best Actress for her role as a female mafia boss
in Galantuomini, while Ukrainian Bohdan Stupka collected the
Best Actor Award for A Warm Heart in which he plays a corrupt
Polish oligarch who discovers he is terminally ill.
Earlier
Friday the festival honoured veteran diva Gina Lollobrigida
with a career Golden Marc'Aurelio Acting Award.
A
documentary, Gina Lollobrigida: An Italian symbol in the world,
was also screened.
"La
Lollo," one of the first European sex symbols to emerge
in the aftermath of World War II, made her Hollywood debut
in 1954, in Beat the Devil, which also starred Humphrey Bogart.
What
followed were roles partnering some of the screen's top leading
men, including Anthony Quinn, Burt Lancaster and Sean Connery.
"I'm
moved by this prize which I receive from Rome, the city where
my career began at its Cinecitta studios. From here it took
me to America and around the world," the 81-year-old
Lollobrigida said.
Some
uncertainty surrounded this year's festival - the event's
third edition, but the first under the city's new, centre-right
mayor, Gianni Alemanno, who has championed a stronger Italian
presence over previous editions' focus on Hollywood productions.
Organizers
however, claimed success. They noted that while the 580,000
visitors for the 10-day event represented a 3.3 percent drop
compared to 2007, a 4.5 percent increase in the number of
tickets sold was registered.
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