10/11/2003

The Italian New Wave director, Francesco Apolloni has won the Grand Jury Prize at the 26th edition of the Festival of Italian Films at Villerupt, with his feature length film Just Do It. The story about the interaction between people from different generations and classes, seduced the jury, led by the man in charge of the Italian film magazine, “Ciak”, Piera De Tassis.

The Villerupt Festival is an important appointment in France for Italian films. This year’s edition started on October 24 and will end tomorrow. There have also been prizes for Il posto dell'anima by Riccardo Milani, which was awarded the Public Prize, with the Press Award being given to Good Morning, Night [+see also:
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film profile] by Marco Bellocchio. The jury of Young Europeans gave a prize to the director Anne Riitta Ciccone for her film L'Amore di Marja, about the ups and downs of a relationshiop between a woman from Finland and a Sicilian man.
The film by the maestro Marco Bellocchio will soon be released in French cinemas. Once again, the Villerupt festival, created in 1976, has fulfilled its role to discover new talents. This is a source of encouragement and it’s hoped that it will help the three filmmakers, Francesco Apolloni, Riccardo Milani and Anne Riitta Ciccone to find a French distributor for their works.

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(Translated from French)