To Italy with love of film

Paolo Rotondo

The first winner of a scholarship to send film-makers to Italy won't face a language barrier when he travels there next year.

Paolo Rotondo, named the scholarship winner at the Italian Film Festival's opening event last night, was born in Naples and came to New Zealand with his Kiwi mother and Italian father when he was 12.

He has - mainly because of the people he calls "my Italian whanau" - kept up his first language.

The 35-year-old, who played a serial killer in The Ugly and a pool shark in Stickmen, made his debut as director with the 14-minute wartime romance Dead Letters, which screened with Wah-Wah at the film festival.

Rotondo will travel to Italy next September to attend the Venice Film Festival and work as an intern at a major film production house.

He hopes to work on a film he's developing about the role of the Maori Battalion in Italy in World War II.