Rome - Afghan director Siddiq Barmak's, Opium War, and
Italy's Giacomo Battiato's Resolution 819, about war crimes in
Bosnia, won top prizes Friday at the International Rome Film Festival.
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 a 3.3 per cent
drop compared to 2007, a 4.5 per cent increase in the number of
tickets sold was registered.
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