Amelio is the last Italian to win the coveted prize for best film at the world's oldest film festival in 1998. He's put himself in line for a reprise with this road movie about a factory mechanic's encounter with industrial China.

    Vincenzo Buonavolunta (Sergio Castellito) is an Italian steel mill worker convinced that a blast furnace dismantled and sold to a Chinese company has a defective part.

    Too late to prevent the sale, he modifies the unit and brings it to China himself, beginning an odyssey around the country which gradually erodes his prejudices and brings him up against Liu Hua (Tai Ling), a student who becomes his interpreter, in language and in life.

    Castellito's Quixotic Buonavolunta is driven by values which seem anachronistic in the age of throwaway consumerism, and Amelio's film skillfully shows that factory workers speak the same language wherever they live.

    "Vincenzo resembles one of those characters from a fable who must carry out impossible tasks to save someone else's life and ends up possibly saving his own," said Amelio.

    Two other Italian films will be shown in the last days of the festival, which features 22 films in the official competition after the organizers added a "surprise" film, "Sanxia Haoren" ("Still Life") by Chinese director Jia Zhangke, on Monday.

    (Source: Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)