Austrian playwright and author Peter Handke, perhaps best-known in film circles for his screenplay of Wim Wenders’ classic Wings Of Desire, has won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. Playwright, novelist, screenwriter and director Handke also wrote Wenders’ movie The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick and directed movies including The Left-Handed Woman and The Absence, both of which starred Bruno Ganz. The decision to award Handke won’t be without controversy given his support for the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war, and for speaking at the 2006 funeral of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of genocide and other war crimes. Meanwhile, Polish novelist and activist Olga Tokarczuk belatedly won the 2018 award, which was delayed by a year after a crisis in the academy sparked by allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of Nobel Academy member Katarina Frostenson. Agnieszka Holland adapted one of Tokarczuk’s most celebrated novels into the 2017 movie Spoor.

The Rome Film Festival will honor John Travolta on October 22 with the Lead Acting Award for his performance in The Fanatic, directed by Fred Durst, frontman of Limp Bizkit. The movie is produced by Oscar Generale. “I’m delighted and honoured to bestow this award on John Travolta for his performance in The Fanatic,” the festival’s artistic director Antonio Monda declared. “It’s a stirring and surprising performance that succeeds in showing how dreams often turn into nightmares in Hollywood.” In the thriller, Travolta plays Moose, a film fan obsessed by his favorite actor, Hunter Dunbar. To finally meet him, his character turns to a woman photographer who knows how to find out where celebrities live.