'Mafia Movie Madness', which features mafia heavies intimidating film audiences, won the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award and was then released as a pre-film short in US movie complexes.
The film includes a scene of grey-suited toughs grabbing filmgoers after they ignore warnings not to bring their own food and drink into the theatre.
Speaking in typical mafia vernacular, one baseball-bat wielding usher tells the audience: 'Any of yous makes any noise during this movie, you're dealing with me, capiche?"
A number of Italian American organisations complained that 'Mafia' reinforced decades of film and TV portrayals of the community being synonymous with organised crime.
Dona De Sanctis, deputy executive director of the Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice, said: "There is nothing balancing it -- you never see an Italian-American character playing a crack scientist ... or the President of the United States."
Coca-Cola responded to the complaints from Sons of Italy and the National Italian American Anti-Defamation League by withdrawing the film. A spokeswoman said: "We regret that anyone was offended and we are removing it from theatres by [Friday]."
De Sanctis traced the beginning of the one-sided portrayal of Italian Americans as mafiosi to the Godfather trilogy in the early 70s, which she said continued with more recent shows such as HBO's The Sopranos.
Film students from leading film schools submit entries in the form of scripts and storyboards to the panel of judges for the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmakers award. Ten finalists are chosen from the entries and each is given a production grant to produce his or her 50-second film.
The winning film student is awarded $10,000 and has his or her film shown on approximately 19,000 screens nationwide as part of Coca-Cola's prefeature programming.
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