“Juno,” a movie about a Minnesota teen faced with an unplanned pregnancy, won the best film award at the Rome Film Festival.
Ellen Page stars as Juno MacGuff, who tries to find a couple to adopt her baby. “Juno,” directed by Jason Reitman and co-starring Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, was the first runner-up for the people’s choice award at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival.
The film opens Dec. 5 in limited release in the U.S.
Jang Wenli received the best-actress award for “Li Chun (And the Spring Comes).” It tells the story of a provincial opera singer who dreams of becoming the star of the Beijing Opera in the years between the end of the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square uprising.
Rade Serbedzija won the best-actor prize for “Fugitive Pieces.” He plays Athos, a Greek archaeologist who saves a Jewish child from Poland who is orphaned during World War II.
A 50-member public jury, made up of selected moviegoers from Italy and elsewhere in Europe, judged the in-competition films at the second annual festival. The top awards were announced Saturday.
Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, who won the best foreign film Oscar with 2001’s “No Man’s Land,” presided over the jury.