The Italian film La Bestia nel Cuore (Don't Tell) has been nominated to compete in the best foreign film category for the upcoming Oscar awards.
The film is directed by Cristina Comencini and is an adaptation of her own novel about a seemingly happy woman who is tormented by strange, previously forgotten memories when she becomes pregnant.
"I really didn't expect it... even if deep down inside I had this irrational gut feeling we'd make it," Comencini said after hearing the news.
"We went to America with so little promotion, so you can say it was the film which did it all," she added. The lead is played by Giovanna Mezzogiorno, one of the upcoming stars of Italian cinema, who won the best actress award at last year's Venice Film Festival for her performance in Comencini's film.
Mezzogiorno said when she received the news of the film's nomination from her press agent she screamed with joy.
"If course I screamed! What else could I do? I can't believe how lucky I am to be part of all this," she told the press in Rome.
According to the actress, the film was well-received in America because "they probably did not expect something like this from Italy. It's a film which really breaks with all stereotypes, the way we are viewed abroad".
Actress Stefania Rocca, who played a blind girl in the film, said she also leapt for joy and immediately told her blind friend who had coached her for her role. The film has met with success, she observed, "because it is full of so many things: emotions, a feeling of shame and the inability of being able to share this with someone else".
"There is also a great deal of sensitivity, depth and even a certain distance. It is not a tearjerker," she added. Don't Tell will be competing against Joyeux Noel, by French director Christian Carion; the Palestinian film Paradise Now, by director Hany Abu-Assad; Germany's Sophie Scholl - the Final Days, by Marc Rothemund; and South Africa's Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood.
Two other Italians were also nominated for awards: Gabriella Pescucci and Dario Marianelli. Pescucci is up for the costume design award for the third time, this year for work in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
She won the Oscar for The Age of Innocence in 1993, after being passed over the first time for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1989. This was the first Oscar nomination for Marianelli, who wrote the musical score for Pride and Prejudice.
The 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony will take place March 6.
Cristina Comencini, 49, is the daughter of director Luigi Comencini, who rose to fame making popular Italian post-war comedies.
She has completed nine films of her own and a tenth is reported to be in preparation.
