David di Donatello - 2007 Winners
by Andre Soares
No particular film dominated the Italian Film Academy’s 51st David di Donatello Awards, presented this evening at the Gran Teatro di Tor di Quinto in Rome, though Giuseppe Tornatore’s La Sconosciuta / The Unknown Woman (above) came out as the top winner of the evening.
Tornatore’s dark drama about a mysterious Ukrainian woman (Ksenia Rappoport, aka Xenia/Ksenyia Rappoport) who finds employment with an Italian family received five trophies (out of 13 nominations, including one for the Young David Award): Best film, best director, best actress (Rappoport), best cinematographer (Fabio Zamarion), and best composer (frequent Tornatore collaborator and Honorary Academy Award recipient Ennio Morricone, his seventh David di Donatello win).
La Sconosciuta marks Tornatore’s third David di Donatello win as best director. His previous victories were for L’Uomo delle stelle / The Starmaker in 1995 and La Leggenda del pianista sull’oceano / The Legend of 1900 in 1998.
Daniele Luchetti’s coming-of-age sociopolitical comedy-drama Mio fratello è figlio unico / My Brother Is an Only Child also scored five wins. The film earned Elio Germano (right photo, standing on the left) a best actor trophy for his role as a young man who gets involved in Italy’s neo-Fascist movement, in addition to awards for best screenplay (Luchetti, Stefano Rulli, and Sandro Petraglia), best supporting actress (Angela Finocchiaro, who tied with Ambra Angiolini for Saturno contro / Saturn in Opposition), best editing (Mirco Garrone), and best sound (Bruno Pupparo).
Other top winners include actor-turned-director Kim Rossi Stuart, who was awarded the best new director trophy for the dysfunctional family drama Anche libero va bene / Along the Ridge; best supporting actor Giorgio Colangeli for Alessandro Angelini’s L’Aria salata / Salty Air; Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s spy melodrama Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, which was chosen the best European Union film (instead of Pedro Almodóvar’s much superior Volver); while the best foreign film prize went to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s multi-story drama Babel.
Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo / The Golden Door, about Italian emigrants leaving for the United States, won statuettes for best production design (Carlos Conti), costume design (Mariano Tufano), and special effects (L’Etude et la Supervision des Trucages).
Career Davids went to director-actor-screenwriter Giuliano Montaldo, 77; director-screenwriter Carlo Lizzani, 85, currently working on the World War II drama Hotel Meina; and composer Armando Trovajoli, 89, whose career spans more than half a century and over 200 films, including La Ciociara / Two Women, Casanova 70, La Più bella serata della mia vita / The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life, and La Nuit de Varennes / That Night in Varennes. Trovajoli’s most recent project was Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri’s 2006 documentary on Marcello Mastroianni, Marcello, una vita dolce / Marcello, a Sweet Life.
Daniele Vicari’s Il mio paese / My Country (above) was the (previously announced) best documentary feature winner. Il Mio paese attempts to follow Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens’s tracks while filming L’Italia non è un paese povero / Italy Is Not a Poor Country (1960), portraying the present state of the same spots visited by Ivens nearly fifty years ago.
As with this year’s César ceremony, where director Pascale Ferran read a long manifesto in support of seasonal film workers, art & politics played an important role throughout the David di Donatello evening.
Several prize winners dedicated their award to the year-old movement "Centoautori" (Hundred Authors), which is demanding that the Italian government spend more on cultural projects, making them more accessible to the public. The movement includes a number of film industry luminaries, among them Bernardo Bertolucci, and this year’s nominees Kim Rossi Stuart, Margherita Buy, Marco Bellocchio, and Daniele Luchetti.
Onstage, presenter Michele Placido read an appeal, declaring, "We were a little sleepy. And there were some who said that left-wing directors wanted to make movies with money from the state. That isn’t true. Culture belongs to all Italians."
"It’s not clear what he meant," remarked the Roman daily Il Messagero. (Google translation.) "But it’s always effective, anyways."
More to the point was best actor winner Elio Germano, who dedicated his award to "the actors, who are the most hapless people there are. And I dedicate it to all the missionaries of the cinema. It’s beautiful to make movies with love, it’s ugly to do it out of greed. Long live the Centoautori and long live those who fight for the cinema. Enough with making movies at the service of TV." (Later in the evening, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, praised the film-TV symbiosis, but then added, "Long live the movies at the movies.")
The David di Donatello ceremony was broadcast live on Rai Due, but later three members of the Italian parliament complained that TG3, one of the country’s most important newscasts, failed to inform its viewers of "two important and prestigious moments" in Italian culture: The David di Donatello winners and the Commendation of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, one of Italy’s highest civilian awards, given to Pedro Almodóvar.
The winners of the 2007 National Union of Italian Film Journalists’ Nastri d’Argento will be announced next June 23.
Correction: Due to a translation error, I’d previously mis-reported that Elio Germano was the one who had said "Long live the movies at the movies."
2007 David di Donatello winners and nominees
2006 David di Donatello winners and nominees
2005 David di Donatello winners and nominees
2007 Nastri d’Argento nominations
Comments
Leave a Reply
Note: All comments are moderated. Different views and opinions are welcome, but abusive/bigoted/flaming comments will NOT be approved. Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has NO contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog or any information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
