Travel Pick: Pop Culture and Cinema in Italy
Milano Film Festival

Among the feature films, seven debut works, two documentaries, and ten Italian premičres, from nine countries. Ten young authors, among which Anna Melikian, the Azerbaijan-born Russian filmmaker whose feature film Mermaid is an urban fable about the mermaid Alisa; two documentaries from the Czech Republic (Peace With Seals by Miloslav Novak, and Lost Holiday by Lucie Králová); the young Chinese filmmaker Weng Shou-ming (26), whose feature Fujian Blue describes human vices and follies of present-day China.

The 2008 Feature Film Award will be conferred by a jury including figures in Italian culture: writers and authors Filippo Timi and Silvia Ballestra, film editor Carlotta Cristiani, the filmmaker Alessandro Piva, and Manuel Agnelli, the frontman of the Italian band Afterhours.