Italian Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore made a successful return to the cinema world Wednesday, when his latest movie won rounds of applause at the Rome Film Fest.
The noirish La Sconosciuta (The Stranger) is Tornatore's first film since the 2000 release of Malena, a drama set in World War II starring Monica Bellucci.
La Sconosciuta is the story of an ex Ukrainian prostitute living in Italy who attempts to face up to a tragedy she experienced in her past life.
At a press conference following the screening, the Sicilian filmmaker insisted the mellow ending was not at odds with the violence and harshness of the rest of the movie. "The end is a result of the whole story," he said.
"This film is not about passing judgements or denouncing injustice. The ending is right because this woman gets back the affection she has given".
Tornatore won the 1990 Best Foreign Film Oscar for his movie Cinema Paradiso.
This was the story of a successful film director's return to his native village for the funeral of an old friend. It was a hit with the public and the critics alike. He also shot The Star Maker (1995), which won a Best Foreign Film Academy Award nomination, and The Legend of 1900 (1998), starring Tim Roth.
The Rome Film Fest returned to business Wednesday after a number of events were cancelled the day before in mourning for the Rome metro crash, which killed one person and injured over 200, five of them critically. Among the highlights of the day was AJ Schnack's 'Kurt Cobain About a Son', a documentary about the leader of rock group Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994. The film makes use of over 25 hours of interview
material with Cobain recorded by US journalist Michael Azerrad for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana.
Schnack said he aimed to portray "Cobain the human being; his intelligence, his spirit, his anger and his paranoia", as opposed to Cobain the rock legend of the early 1990s. "For me and many others of my generation, Kurt Cobain was a figure we could identify with as he spoke about the
collective experiences which characterized America at that time," he added.
"He spoke about life in small towns, changes in the social structure, women, homosexuals. All this created a sort of chaos and sense of disorientation which Kurt was the spokesperson of". Three of the movies running in the main festival competition are also being unveiled Wednesday.
Critically acclaimed Iranian director and actress Niki Karimi is presenting A Few Days Later. This is about a 34-year-old woman who must take a tough decision regarding her love life. French director Olivier Masset-Depasse's Cages is the story of a couple who have lost the ability to communicate with each other.
This is England by Shane Meadows is about a 12 year-old boy who starts hanging out with a group of skinheads after losing his father in the Falklands War. The debut edition of the Rome Film Fest opened Friday and it runs until Saturday.
