Montreal: Iranian director Majid Majidi’s touching portrait of two children from a poor inner-city neighborhood, The Children of Heaven, took home two of the top honors at the 21st edition of the Montreal World Film Festival, the Grand Prix des Ameriques for best film in competition, and the Air Canada Award for the festival’s most popular film. The film drew immediate North American distribution interest at the market and also won the humanitarian Ecumenical Prize.

Fabio Carpi’s elegant Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, an Italy/France coproduction, won the Special Jury and best screenplay prizes. Best director honors were shared by Spain’s Carlos Saura for Pajarico and Japan’s Juni Ichikawa for Tokyo Lullaby. Performance awards went to Sam Rockwell for his role in the highly praised u.k. film Lawn Dogs and Frances O’Connor for the riveting Australian feature Kiss or Kill.

Canadian awards went to Michel Poulette’s La Conciergerie, winner of the $25,000 Telefilm Canada prize, and National Film Board animator Louise Johnson, who won a Special Jury prize for her film When the Dust Settles.

Festival high notes included a lifetime achievement tribute to American actor Rod Steiger and a Special Grand Prix des Ameriques career achievement award to Romany filmmaker Tony Gatlif.

The Prix de Montreal for best first-time filmmaker went to Bence Gyongyossy for the French-Hungarian coproduction Romani Kris. Top prize in the live-action short film category was won by New Zealand’s Robert Sarkies for Signing Off.

Features with strong press reviews at WFF ’97 include Yoshimitsu Morita’s Lost Paradise, Xie Jin’s The Opium War, Bill Bennett’s violent Kiss or Kill, Robert Guediguian’s Marius et Jeanette, a contemporary fairy tale set in Marseilles, Mike Leigh’s Career Girls, and Alan Rickman’s directorial debut The Winter Guest, the festival’s closing night film, and two films from Canadian directors, Peter Svatek’s Call of the Wild, a beautifully shot Jack London wilderness adaptation, and the Jean Marc Vallee spaghetti western reprise Los Locos.

Other favorites were Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty, a story about unemployed steelworkers who form an unlikely strip act, George Hickenlooper’s brilliant low-budget, big-cast portrait of failure in small-town America, Dogtown and Nick Cassavetes’ dark, booze-drenched romance She’s So Lovely.

The $1,000 nfb-sponsored Norman McLaren Award for best film at the 28th Canadian Student Film Festival went to Serge Marcotte (Concordia University) for The Sickroom. Jean-Francois Asselin (Concordia) won the $2,500 Viacom Canada award for best new student director for Crise d’Identite a la deuxieme personne du singulier.