News from Italy
The winners of the 71st Taormina Film Festival
The seventy-first edition of the Taormina Film Festival has ended. The award for Best Film was won by the Argentine film For Your Sake by Axel Monsú.
The seventy-first edition of the Taormina Film Festival ended with the awards ceremony, which took place in the splendid Teatro Antico. The award for Best Film was won by the Argentine film For Your Sake by Axel Monsú. Starring Sabrina Melgarejo, Gastón Ricaud, and Jabes Alatiel Mulka, it follows the adventures of a teenager named Zulma, who is forced to grow up in an impoverished rural context and follow the rules imposed on her by her family and religious community.
The award for Best Director was won by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza (screenwriter) for their work on Warfare. The film was made based on the memories, testimonies, and experiences of a group of men from the American Navy’s special forces, specifically the Navy SEALs (including Mendoza himself), who participated in a high-risk mission in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006.
Best Actress in a Leading Role is Ebada Hassan for Brides. The film tells the story of two girls in search of freedom and belonging who flee their lives in the UK to go to Syria to support ISIS.
Finally, the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role went to Geoffrey Rush for The Rule of Jenny Pen by James Ashcroft, which also relies on the talents of John Lithgow, George Henare and Ian Mune. The film is a psychological horror about a judge in a retirement home who tries to stop an elderly psychopath who uses a puppet to mistreat the other residents of the facility.
