When Roberto Benigni attended the premiere of his film Life is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) at the Jerusalem Film Festival last week, he held his breath as the audience watched in complete silence.

Benigni: "Comedy is as important as tragedy"

But as the credits rolled, everyone in the cinema - including Holocaust survivors - leapt to their feet and gave him a standing ovation.

The film centres on an Italian Jew called Guido, a Chaplinesque figure played by Benigni himself - a well-known comedian in his home country, Italy.

Guido marries an Italian aristocrat, Dora (Nicholetta Braschi), after wooing her away from a fascist bureaucrat.

They have a son and towards the end of World War II, the whole family is sent to a concentration camp.

Guido's son: told camp life is make-believe

Guido protects his son, Giosué, from the horrors of camp life by telling him it is all a complex game in which the players win points for hiding from the guards and controlling their fear. The winner, says Guido, will be presented with a real battle tank.

Toast of the town

Benigni was worried about Israeli reaction to the film - which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year.

Yet he probably never expected such overwhelming praise from the very people who might have found it most offensive - Israeli Jews.

"They ate him up like a piece of chocolate," said the festival co-ordinator, Judith Lungen, describing Benigni as "an extraordinary human being".

"It's not fair to call the film a comedy. It has sensitivity, warmth, love - we all fell in love with it," she insisted - lest it is compared with Mel Brooke's comedy The Producers, about two crooked impresarios who stage a farcical Hitler musical.

Jury 'in tears'

Members of the festival jury came out of the private screening in tears, said Ms Lungen.

So it was only natural that they awarded Benigni the Jewish Experience Award for "using the comedy in a very sensitive and humane way" to recreate "the most traumatic event in Jewish history".

The prize was formally presented to the actor-director by Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert.

Comedy 'can deal with any topic'

Foreign journalists, normally preoccupied with the tense political situation in the country, besieged the actor-director with questions after the premiere.

He told them that although he was not Jewish, his father had been sent to a labour camp during the war and he felt compelled to tackle this traumatic subject matter in the best way he knew.

"Who said it is forbidden to make a comedy about the Holocaust?" he said. "In my eyes, comedy is no less important than tragedy, and it is entitled to deal with any topic and has always done so."

But how is that Jewish audiences in Jerusalem welcomed a movie that even Cannes found slightly controversial?

"Israel is a crossroads for culture from the Middle East, Europe, Far East. So when something as beautiful as this comes along it is appreciated for what it is," explained Ms Lungen.