Juno wins at Rome Film Festival
Rome Film Festival was one of the several important world cinema events that closed over the weekend. Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman won the award for best film with his new feature Juno, a movie that follows an American teenager who is forced to deal with an unplanned pregnancy and makes a series of unusual choices. Young Canadian actress Ellen Page, best known as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand plays the leading role and the cast also includes Jennifer Garner, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Michael Cera and Jason Bateman.
The Festival jury, presided by Oscar winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land), presented three other main awards. Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija won the prize for best actor for his portrayal of a Greek archaeologist who saves a young Jewish boy in Fugitive Pieces, a feature by Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa that opened this year’s Toronto Film Festival.
Chinese actress Jang Wenli won the award for best actress for her performance in Chan Wei Gu’s And the Spring Comes (Li Chun). In the movie, she plays a singer who dreams of performing at the Beijing opera.
Finally, Iranian director Abolfazl Jalili was presented with the Special Jury Prize for his feature Hafez, a period piece set in the 14th century that tells the tale of the famous Persian poet’s forbidden love for a young woman he is assigned to teach.
The 2007 Rome Film Festival featured 14 movies in competition and attracted as many as 110,000 viewers. Sophia Loren, Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone, Sofia Coppola and Mira Sorvino were only some of the big names in attendance this year.
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