Life is beautiful has been nominated for best film, best foreign language film, best original screenplay, best original dramatic score, and best screenplay. Benigni has also been nominated for best actor a leading role, and best director.

The film, as Benigni, says, is a fairy tale about the holocaust. On the line from Los Angeles, the popular Italian director said, "It's just a story. It doesn't pretend to show life in a real death camp."

The Corriere della Sera newspaper published a declaration from the leader of Rome's Jewish community, Sandro di Castro. Di Castro says the film has been warmly greeted in Israel and even by the Anti-Defamation League. He also says it has awakened the consciences of young people, who were expecting a typical Benigni-style comedy, but the second half of the film poses serious questions and makes you wonder about the holocaust.

According to Italian Arts Minister Grazia Melandri, "Benigni has found a way to conquer world cinema in a movie with a very difficult, delicate, and deep story. He has shown great courage, because his film opens a deep wound like the holocaust, and it will be hard going to close it. Even so, he has brought together tragedy and irony with great skill, without overstepping the bounds of respect for victims' feelings."

As with all art, there have also been criticisms. John Simon in the National Review says the film is a "disgusting farce."< P>

The Corriere della Sera reported that even Steven Spielberg is critical of the film, but that he has kept quiet so as not to offend Miramax, its American distributors. The director Andrée Ruth Shammah, on the other hand, said the film was "exceptionally good," and any unworthy imitations would be rightly criticized. She said Benigni's film was the only way to tell the holocaust story to young people, saying she'd had enough of rhetoric and "Schindler's List."< P>

Vincenzo Cerami, who co-wrote with Benigni, says the best award was the approval of the Jewish Community in Milan, which applauded them. He says that at the Milan preview he realized they hadn't made the biggest mistake of all: being disrespectful.