(The photos are published courtesy of the MAGNA GRAECIA FILM FESTIVAL)

The 18th edition of the Magna Graecia Film Festival conceived and directed by Gianvito Casadonte ended with the award ceremony.

Nine days of screenings and meetings that embraced the whole city, from the sea to the historic center of the Calabrian capital. National and international previews, exceptional masterclass - from Paul Haggis to Gioacchino Criaco, from John Savage to Marco Risi, Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke musical performances and many guests animated this edition, which saw the final awards of the three competitions last night. All the prizes were made by the goldsmith Michele Affidato.

Below are the prizes and motivations of the respective juries.

The jury of the competition dedicated to Italian first and second works, composed by Pappi Corsicato (President), Marco Bocci, Ivan Carlei, Francesco Ghiaccio, Claudio Noce and Teresa Saponangelo decreed:

Best First Feature Film – The bad poet by Gianluca Jodice

While confronting one of the most complex characters in the history of Italy, the director moves with the confidence of a veteran finding a perfect balance between storytelling, cast and direction. His first work, as well as revealing his talent, it places him fully among the most promising Italian directors.

Best Actor - Francesco Patanè for The bad poet

Through his rigorous and dry style with which he built his character, he managed to tell us in a credible and touching way, an era and its style.

Best Actress - Ginevra Francesconi for Regina

So young but already capable of alternating moments of great sweetness and apparent submission with moments of great grit and determination. Thus showing that he has all the cards for a promising cinematic future

best Director – John The Word for my body will bury you
A stray and explosive trip to the Western. A work that goes through without fear and awe the highest challenges that this genre brings with it. The director follows without any hesitation a narrative and formal path full of pitfalls and possible falls with the skill and wisdom of a "thoroughbred" director

best Screenplay – Antonio Pisu by EST

A suitcase travels dangerously through Ceausescu's Romania, inside is the meaning of our existence, true affections, dreams, the hopes of a family and consequently of an entire people. Through the story of a story that really happened, small yet powerful for its symbolic value, A work that makes us understand that if everything has a price, few things really have value.

Audience Award to Regina by Alessandro Grande

For being able to speak to the heart of the public with an intimate story, moving, exciting. A father and a daughter, so close and so far, they accompany the viewer through a coming-of-age novel that has an unprecedented Calabria in the background, which becomes a place of the soul.

A Special Mention was awarded to director Susy Laude for All for Uma

For bringing back a long forgotten genre in Italian cinema, the fairytale, and having done it at a time when there is an absolute need to go back to dreaming and smiling

The documentary jury composed by Gloria Giorgianni (President), Luca Martera and Roberto Orazi decreed:

Best Documentary - Punta Sacra by Francesca Mazzoleni

A work that encompasses all the formal and aesthetic elements of the modern documentary form. The stories told are powerful and current, and offer the starting point for a profound reflection on the sense of belonging to a place, which in the film represents a reason for suffering but also for hope for the humanity that lives it. A courageous direction, who was able to balance the observation and interpretation of that limbo of earth on the margins of society, to restore dignity and respect.

The jury of the international section composed by John Savage (President), Gianluca Guzzo and Caterina Shulha decreed:

Best International Opera - After Love by Aleem Kham

A moving film about a woman who discovers after her husband's death that she had a secret relationship with another woman. After the shock and pain of discovery, decides to visit her husband's lover. But it is a meeting that the difficulties of the language – and much to the surprise of the two women and the audience – leads to shocking revelations and understanding, overcome anger, of a different acceptance. A powerful film about an intimate yet universal subject.

Petitto Award – Francesco Montanari

For love, the talent and realism with which he faced the challenge of playing a fallible and insecure father, and therefore deeply human. A convincing performance as an actor that enriches a brilliant career as a great professional.

Vittorio De Seta Award - Waiting by Mattia Isaac Renda

The work "Attesa" by Mattia Isaac Renda takes us with delicacy, after many years, in that rural world told by De Seta through his works of the "Lost World". In those places, But, funerals are not celebrated and bodies are not exhumed. Rather, objects, the stones, the signs of time, as living witnesses, they speak to our consciences. So the pictures, which do not need to be accompanied by words, they are messengers of sounds, of vine, of memories. They testify to absences, the faults, the shortcomings towards a world, that peasant who, as denounced with insight and foresight by the master Vittorio De Seta, was guilty and quickly dismissed, along with the popular culture that animated it. It is striking that these emotions are conveyed by the work of such a young author who sensitively launches a warning to us all, while waiting, perhaps, that a new awareness allows the narrated places to find new listening e, perhaps, also a new life.

They received, during the evenings of the festival, the Golden Column: Lillo Petrolo, Nick Vallelonga, John Savage, Gioacchino Criaco, Nicola Gratteri, Vito Teti, Marco Risi, Peter Greenaway, Paolo Bonolis, Giovanni Minoli, Paul Haggis and Gianluca Guzzo.

Many guests who walked the catanzaro red carpet: among others Massimo Mauro and Gianni Speranza, Michela Giraud, Andrea Roncato, Giulia Elettra Gorietti, Alessandro Haber, Francesco Pannofino and Laura Freddi. To present the evenings, Carolina Di Domenico, flanked for the final by Federico Russo. Three musical performances, guitar and voice, at Emit, Eugenio Cesaro and Tecla Insolia. The godmother of this edition was the actress and model Greta Ferro, who made his film debut with the thriller "Weekend" by Riccardo Grandi e, this year, was on the set of the new film by Luca Lucini, "I and my brother".