After 10 days, 187 films, and more than 31,000 audience members, the 26th Starz Denver International Film Festival has announced the winners for the festival’s Starz People’s Choice Awards, as well as the winner of the juried competition for the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Best European Film.
“THE BEST OF YOUTH,” a two-part, six-hour film from Italy is the 2003 winner of the People’s Choice Award for the best new feature-length fictional film. THE BEST OF YOUTH was one of 13 films that screened as part of the festival’s Salute to Italian Cinema. Each part was shown twice during the 10-day celebration of independent cinema. Director Marco Tullio Giordana has created an epic chronicle of the Caratis family from the 1960’s to the present in “THE BEST OF YOUTH” in which two polarized brothers, Nicola and Matteo, live their opposite lives against the backdrop of significant events in Italian history.
For Best Feature-Length Documentary, Denver audiences selected “BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE, BY THE LEGENDS WHO WERE THERE.” Director Rick McKay traveled the world for five years interviewing more than 100 of the legendary stars, directors, composers and lyricists who created such shows as “Gypsy,” “West Side Story,” and “Camelot.” Their vivid recollections are combined with rare performance footage.
A local jury panel comprised of local and national film critics has selected Iceland’s “NOI ALBINOI” as the winner of this year’s Krzysztof Kieslowski Award. In the film, Noi, a gifted but rebellious teen, copes with life in an isolated Icelandic town in this impressive debut feature. Noi ditches school and wanders around aimlessly until he meets and falls in love with Iris, the new girl in town, and a kindred spirit. Although he applies his formidable intelligence to finding a way to run away with her, his plans don’t work out as he expected.
