COLUMBUS, Ind. - A new film that includes the city of Columbus' rich architecture as a backdrop has won a top honor at a European film festival.
The movie, "Columbus," won best feature film at the Valletta Film Festival in Malta. Its star, Haley Lu Richardson, was honored as best actress.
Richardson portrays a woman who lives with her mother in a Midwestern town dotted with Modernist buildings. She develops a friendship with a visitor portrayed by John Cho who's caring for his dying father.
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It's directed by a Nashville, Tennessee, director who goes by the name of Kogonada, and was filmed in Columbus, Indiana last summer.
Erin Hawkins, who works for the Columbus visitors' center, worked closely with the production crew.
"The ultimate fantasy would be that it would be a tourism boom for us in the same way that say 'The Bridges of Madison County' was for Madison County, Iowa several years ago," Hawkins said.
The city 40 miles south of Indianapolis boasts several buildings designed by such world-renowned architects as Cesar Pelli and I.M. Pei.
