When we think of fandoms, our minds usually picture pop culture cabals that celebrate their beloved interest with some serious zeal. We're talking Harry Potter fans that play in actual Quidditch leagues, Star Trek fans that say their wedding vows in Klingon, cosplayers that fancy it up at every convention, and those fan-fiction writers who spill gallons of ink miles of binary code on fanfiction.net.

Fun fact: the longest work of fiction ever written is a Super Smash Bros. fan fiction. Titled The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest, it is 3,548,615 words long. That's six times longer than War and Peace (source).

Okay, back to the task at hand.

Given that Life Is Beautiful deals with the Holocaust, it's no wonder that the film hasn't amassed this type of fandom. But it does have its fan base, and that's, uh, people who like good films.

Life Is Beautiful was nominated for seven Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two awards at the 1998 AFI Fest. It was also nominated for best foreign film at national competitions from Japan to Spain to Australia.

That's a lotta love, and the film won a fair share of those awards, among them the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. We'd say it's probably a good thing Roberto Benigni didn't win them all, or he'd have no more room in his house for anything but awards.

The film's also been praised for its willingness to tackle a subject as difficult as the Holocaust in such a unique way. It's a mainstay on lists counting down the best Holocaust films (see here and here). It's even received praise from Holocaust historians and survivors.

Marcia Josephy, president of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, called it "a serious comedy that pays tribute to art as resistance and to the indomitable human spirit." And Abraham Foxman, a member of the Anti-Defamation League and Holocaust survivor himself, said audiences will "walk away with a deeper understanding of the human dimension of the tragedy" (source).

That's some serious respect from a tough audience. If people who know the worst of the Holocaust can see the benefit of the film, Benigni must have done something very right.