Chinese movie awarded at Italian film festival

A Chinese movie won the 34th edition of the Turin Film Festival for an annual award.

According to local media on Monday, the jury awarded "Best Movie" and "Best Screenplay" to The Donor by Zang Qiwu (China, 2016).

This year the competition presented 15 films from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Serbia, Britain and the United States. The main competitive section of the festival, running from Nov 18 to 26, was reserved for directors' first, second or third films.

According to the jury, The Donor won for best movie because it was a film "so beautifully observed in such rigorous poetic means -- in storytelling, direction, performance and understanding in the world we try and live in."

"We think we have found a new voice in Chinese cinema that we will all be enriched by," the jury wrote.

The jury was chaired by cinematographer Ed Lachman United States and was comprised of Canadian author and director Don McKellar, General Manager of German Films Service Mariette Rissenbeek, Romanian director Adrian Sitaru, and Israeli actress Hadas Yaron.

The Donor, a drama set in Shanghai, speaks about the sale of organs. The Best Screenplay award was assigned to the movie because: "The jury was impressed by a taut, emotionally-devastating film that shows how the Italian Neo-realist tradition is still alive and vital, even in distant corners of the globe."

The Donor was assigned also the AVANTI Award. The Turin Film Festival's official motivation for giving out the prize was: "For having recounted, with great stylistic precision and surprising narrative choices, the drama of the human body's commercialization and the relationships of power."

Another prize, the Cipputi Award, was assigned to Old Stone by Chinese-Canadian Johnny Ma.