Valeska Grisebach's Mein Stern has scooped the top prize at this year's Turin Film Festival, Italy's prestigious cutting-edge event which is dedicated to emerging directors.

The Austrian-German film about teenage love was awarded $18,000 (40,000,000 ITL), after being praised by the jury for its "timing and perfect, realistic acting."

Meanwhile, Iran's Rakhshan Bani Etermad picked up the Public's Prize for Under The Skin Of The City (Zir-e Poost-e Shahr), a drama about a factory worker who worries about his son's future on the eve of an important political election.

Taiwan's Hsiao Ya-chuan was awarded the festival's Best Debut prize for Ming Dai Ahui Zhu / Mirror Image, a film about a man who has had an accident and is uncertain about his future.

Other prizes went to Celine Macherel, who picked up the Best Short Film award for her French-Swiss film Un Oiseau Dans Le Plafond, and Italian director Gianfranco Pannone, who won the festival's prestigious documentary award for Latina/Littoria, about a middle-aged Marxist writer and an eighty-year-old mayor, who are both former Fascists.

The 19th edition of the festival, which is run by film critic Stefano della Casa, featured sidebars dedicated to Anthony Mann's series of Westerns featuring James Stewart, Egyptian cinema, George A. Romero, as well as contemporary Japanese cinema.