Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore earned international acclaim in 1988 with his second film, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso. A nostalgic and unabashedly sentimental tribute to the influence of movies on a young boy's life, the film earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Tornatore was born in Bagheria, Italy. Before becoming a filmmaker, he was an award-winning still photographer and then a television director who specialized in making documentaries. Tornatore made his feature-film debut in 1985 with Il Camorrista/The Professor.