23/06/2025 - The latest edition of the Neapolitan event will unspool between 28 June and 5 July, combining entertainment and reflection and boasting international visions and guests

To place location centre-stage, once again, as a narrative act; a living space which - far from neutral - is capable of influencing the very form of the story: this is the aim of the 23rd Ischia Film Festival, a now obligatory summertime meeting point for world cinema, based at Aragonese Castle on the Neapolitan island, providing a space for entertainment and reflection.

Between 28 June and 5 July, the competitive “Location Denied” section will lend a voice to forgotten regions where human rights come up against censorship, silence and exile. Attendees will be treated to a premiere of Prison Beauty Contest by Serbian director Srđan Šarenac, which sees the director of Brazil’s Pirajui prison deciding to revive inmates’ self-esteem by organising a beauty contest; Silent Trees [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Poland’s Agnieszka Zwiefka, which is a partially animated coming-of-age tale set on the border between Poland and Belarus and unfolding against the backdrop of the global refugee crisis, and Montenegrin film Tower of Strength [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Nikola I. Vukčević, which takes place in the Second World War in Yugoslavia and is led by a Christian child who’s on the run from the fascists who killed his parents and who ultimately finds refuge in a Muslim man’s home. The selected films also include A Man Fell [+see also:
interview: Giovanni C Lorusso
film profile] by Giovanni C. Lorusso, which was presented last year in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori line-up, and a world premiere of Glass Beach, which American director Will Geiger shot in Italy after spending four years living and working with fishermen along the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Calabria.

Standing tall among the seven titles gracing the Feature Films Competition are Lost for Words, which is artist Hannah Papacek-Harper’s debut documentary, inviting audiences to reflect upon our relationship with nature and to imagine the future of our planet; Nella colonia penale by Gaetano Crivaro, Silvia Perra, Ferruccio Goia and Alberto Diana, which focuses on three penal colonies still in operation today in Sardinia, where inmates alternate time in their cells with work in the fields. It’s a prison system which is in decline but which still reflects society’s contradictions; Portuguese movie A Pedra Sonha dar Flor by Rodrigo Areias, which tells a story veering between crimes and hallucinations based on the works of Raul Brandão; English work The Wheelbarrow by Kai Ephron, which revolves around a mute and solitary man called Oscar living in Köpstadsö in Sweden who’s looking for something buried on the island. But when a visitor seems to recognise him, his life begins to slip through his fingers.

Some of the most acclaimed Italian titles over the past season have been selected for the “Best of” section, which will bestow an Audience Award for Best Film: The Illusion [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Roberto Andò, La casa degli sguardi [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Luca Zingaretti, La città proibita [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Gabriele Mainetti, Napoli - New York [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Gabriele Salvatores, Parthenope [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Paolo Sorrentino and The Time It Takes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Francesca Comencini
film profile] by Francesca Comencini.

Last but not least, Palestinian director, screenwriter and film producer Rashid Masharawi, who was born and raised in a refugee camp on the Gaze Strip, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for his talent for depicting the vulnerability and dignity of a people at war, also testified by his movie Passing Dreams [+see also:
trailer
interview: Rashid Masharawi
film profile], which is set to be screened in Ischia.

(Translated from Italian)