In the First Rome Film Festival winning meant more than just collecting trophies, Samir Farid writes This, the first International Film Festival of Rome (13-21 October) was a spectacular success on many levels, not least in the choice of awards. The Best Film Award, worth 200,000 euros, was garnered by the Russian Playing the Victim, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. Born in 1969, Serebrennikov is considered one of the foremost Russian directors to emerge after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Playing the Victim, his third film, which also won the Best Film Award at the Russian National Film Festival, is based on an adaptation, by Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov, of Hamlet. Hamlet in today's Moscow is Valya, an actor in police re-enactments of crime scenes. His dead father announces in a dream that Valya's mother has poisoned him with the connivance of his uncle. Consequently, the young man turns from playing the role of victim to that of the murderer. The film is manifestly postmodern, combining narrative, documentary and animation forms; realism, expressionism and surrealism modes; colour and black and white and styles of cinema, video and animation. Its style, which rejects equilibrium and creates beauty out of ugliness, agrees with the turbulence of Russian reality after the dissolution of the USSR. As he received the award from Italian director Ettore Scola, who headed the jury, he said it was all a big surprise because the film was "for Russia and for Russians." The awards for the Rome festival were chosen by a 50-member "popular jury" composed from film buffs, who went for the more experimental fare. The Special Jury Award went to This Is England, directed by Shane Meadows, which presents a powerful indictment of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism. The Award for Best Actor went to Italy's Giorgio Colangeli for his role in L'aria salata, directed by Alessandro Angelini, while France's Ariane Ascaride won the Best Actress Award for her role in Armenia, directed by Robert Guediguian. Only 16 films were screened in the official competition for feature films, representing Italy, France, China, Belgium, Japan, Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Argentine. In the "Alice in Town" film section for children and young adults, Italian film Liscio, directed by Claudio Antonini, won the award for films for children under 12, while American director Morgan J Freeman's Just Like the Son was the recipient of the award for films for young adults. The jury that selected these two awards was composed of 75 members, including cinema-lovers, children and young people. Additional awards were presented by three different juries representing three institutions. The Award for Best Feature went to the Italian film The Unknown, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, which was screened in the out-of-competition "premiere" section, while Deep Water, directed by Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell, received the Best Documentary Award, and the Best Actor Award went to Ninetto Davoli for his role in the Italian Film Uno su due, directed by Eugenio Cappuccio. While Nicole Kidman's film Fur: An imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, directed by Steven Shainberg, premiered at the opening of the festival, Robert De Niro was the star of the closing ceremony, at which excerpts from the film he directed and played a role in, The Good Shepherd, were screened. De Niro was received by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano who bestowed on him honorary Italian citizenship and, in the evening, the mayor of Rome presented him with his Italian passport. There is no doubt that Rome witnessed the birth of an important and very successful festival. During this year's event, 169 films from 32 countries, including Egypt, with Marawan Hamed's Imaret Yakoubian (The Yacoubian Building), were screened -- a wide scope for a first film festival.
