Two war films, Resolution 819 about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and Opium War set in contemporary Afghanistan, won top honors Friday at the Rome Film Festival.
Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak, whose film relates the adventures of two US soldiers, one white and one black, lost in the poppy fields of Afghanistan, won the jury prize for best film.
Barmak s Osama, about an Afghan girl who dressed as a boy so she could go out and work to support her widowed mother, had won a Golden Globe award in 2004.
The public, who could vote as they left each screening, came out in favor of Resolution 819 by Italian director Giacomo Battiato.
The title refers to the UN resolution that guaranteed the security of Muslims in the safe haven of Srebrenica, in Bosnia.
Serb forces slaughtered nearly 8,000 men and boys when they took over the city in July 1995.
The film follows a French investigator played by Benoit Magimel, sent by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague to investigate the massacre.
Italy s Donatella Finocchiaro, who starred in the mafia film Galantuomini by Edoardo Winspeare, won best actress, while Bohdan Stupka of Ukraine won best actor for his role in the Ukrainian-Polish drama Serce na Dloni (A Warm Heart) by Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi.
Also Friday, a lifetime achievement award was bestowed on Italian legend Gina Lollobrigida, whose career has spanned more than six decades.
The festival was launched in 2006 by then Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, a film buff with many friends in Hollywood.
Its future looked uncertain ahead of Italy s general elections in April as the right-wing candidate to succeed Veltroni, eventual winner Gianni Alemanno, threatened to scrap it or at least make it more Italian.
The third edition this year was less flashy than the first two, and only one American film was among the 20 in competition, Pride and Glory by Gavin O Connor.
The budget shrank from ?17.6 million in 2007 to ?15.5 million this year, according to the ANSA news agency. – AFP
