Robert Novak's column today spotlights a movie with a pro-life theme that won the Toronto Film Festival's "People's Choice Award."
An invited audience including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez gathered at the National Geographic Society's auditorium in Washington Monday night for a screening of "Bella," an independently produced feature film. No mere movie, it offers hope for the beleaguered anti-abortion movement to reverse the political tide running against it.
This was the eighth such screening in Washington. Monday night's audience reflected the reaction in
more than 100 showings nationwide: an emotional experience for a stunning exhibition of cinema art that unexpectedly won a Toronto Film Festival award. It is no propaganda film but a dramatic depiction of choices facing an unmarried pregnant woman.
. . . "Bella" was conceived by three young Mexican men -- producer, director and lead actor -- who are conservative Catholics and want to make movies removed from Hollywood's movie culture of sex and violence. Bankrolled by a wealthy Catholic family from Philadelphia, they shot the film in 24 days in New York City.
. . . It was a stretch to get "Bella" even shown at Toronto, much less win an award. "Going into the festival," said the Hollywood Reporter, "absolutely no one, including the team of filmmakers that made 'Bella,' ever imagined it would capture the People's Choice Award, voted on by festival audiences."
Even with the Toronto prize, which in the past has led to Academy and Golden Globe awards, however, it is hard to get the film in movie houses, and it may be necessary for the filmmakers to form a distribution company. . .
. . . If the Crucifixion in "The Passion" was hard to take for non-Christians and some Christians, "Bella" on one level is a drama without religious overtones. But while the audience at Monday's screening was moved to tears, reaction from a commercial theater audience -- including women who have chosen an abortion -- could be different. The pro-life movement hopes, in the absence of effort by supposedly pro-life politicians, it will point to a different way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.