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Life is Beautiful - Making records in the USA

Why life really is beautiful

Buoyed by its seven Academy Award nominations, Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful has become the highest-grossing foreign-language film of all time in North America.

Expanding to 644 screens last Friday, the film earned more than $2.8 million over the four-day US holiday weekend, taking its combined North American gross to $21,867,419 by the end of Monday. This surpassed the $21,845,977 Il Postino grossed in 1995.

The five top-grossing foreign-language films of all time in North America have all been distributed by Miramax, which has handled 11 of the top 20 in the 1990s. Rounding out the five with Life is Beautiful and Il Postino are Like Water for Chocolate ($21.7 million), Cinema Paradiso ($12 million) and Shall We Dance? ($9.6 million). Only Cinema Paradiso picked up the Academy Award for best foreign- language picture. Christopher Pickard