Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl won the top prize of best film in the Progressive Cinema competition at this year’s Rome Film Festival, which
Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl won the top prize of best film in the Progressive Cinema competition at this year’s Rome Film Festival, which closed on October 26.
Tsou’s solo directing debut is produced, edited and co-written by Sean Baker and produced by Tsou with Mike Goodridge of the UK’s Good Chaos. Le Pacte is handling sales; Netflix has rights to most of the world.
The Taipei-set drama follows a single mother and her two daughters as they adapt to a up-to-date environment by opening a stand in a bustling night market. It made its world premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week and is Taiwan’s entry to the best international film Oscar.
China’s Wang Tong won the best director prize for social drama Wild Nights, Tamed Beasts with the jury grand prize awarded to Pauline Loquès’ feature debut Nino.
The best screenplay award was presented to Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Alireza Khatami for The Things You Kill, a film he also directed.
Anson Boon walked away with the festival’s Vittorio Gassman best actor award for his turn in thriller Good Boy, the English-language debut from Corpus Christi filmmaker Jan Komasa.
Jasmine Trinca’s role in Andrea De Sica’s Italian drama I Saw What You Did earned her the Monica Vitti award for best actress.
The special jury prize went to the cast of the film 40 Seconds, the Italian biographical drama based on a true story directed by Vincenzo Alfieri from a script he co-wrote with Giuseppe Stasi. The film retraces 24 hours leading up to the brutal beating and death of a man who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Actress, screenwriter, author and director Paola Cortellesi chaired the jury comprised of Finnish director and screenwriter Teemu Nikki, UK writer-director William Oldroyd, US author and illustrator Brian Selznick, and French-Finnish actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz.
The awards ceremony took place in the early evening of October 25 in the Sala Petrassi, one of the festival’s key locations in the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in the Italian capital.
Italian director Alberto Palmiero won the best first feature award for Tienimi Present, chosen by a jury chaired by Argentinian director and producer Santiago Mitre, with UK director/screenwriter Christopher Andrews and Italian actress Barbara Ronchi. The first feature prize was selected from throughout the festival – the Progressive Cinema Competition, Freestyle and Grand Public sections.
A special mention went to actors Samuel Bottomley and Séamus McLean Ross for James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’.
The documentary jury, chaired by Romanian director, cinematographer, editor and producer Alexander Nanau, with director and screenwriter Santiago Maza and producer Nadia Trevisan, awarded the festival’s inaugural best documentary feature prize to Yegor Troyanovsky’s Cuba & Alaska.
The audience award was won by Ilaria de Laurentiis, Andrea Paolo Massara, Raffaele Brunetti’s documentary Roberto Rossellini – More Than One Life.
Festival organisers said this year’s event posted a 6% rise in overall attendance, year on year, hitting 116,503 attendees across 12 days. The festival boasted 198 films from 38 countries. It ran from October 15-26.
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