French film wins best picture award at Beijing festival

French short film Rosso: A True Lie About a Fisherman became the biggest winner at the 18th International Student Film and Video Festival of Beijing Film Academy.

A directorial work of Antonio Messana, Rosso took home the best picture award of the weeklong festival, which came to end on Oct 27.

Rated a high score of 7.2 points out of 10 on China's most popular review site Douban, the story unfolds with Clemente, an elderly fisherman, who discovers a young refugee's body stuck in the fishnets one day, ensuing a series of incidents that disturb his peaceful life.

Director Xie Fei, also a professor at Beijing Film Academy, presenting the award said the film deploys an in-depth examination of human conflicts in our modern world.

Jury's Special Awards went to the Czech film The Kite, United States' short tale Under Darkness and Russian production Bifurcation Point.

Chinese film Immaculate Conception won the best documentary award and the best animated picture went to French film tale Best Friend.

The organizers collected 2,045 works from 69 countries and regions, including 891 from Chinese student directors and 1,154 from their foreign counterparts. All the 10 awards were selected from 82 entries that were shortlisted from an initial selection.