26/06/2025 - Research carried out by the Association of Italian Film Festivals in league with Ergo Research and Cinetel/CinExpert also highlights the difficulties faced by festival organisers

A moment of the presentation of the research

In the period between March 2024 and February 2025, there were 2.1 million admissions to film screenings in Italian film festivals out of the total 71 million tickets sold in that same period (+4% on the 12 previous months), with an increase in viewers from the 15-34 age bracket. Based on findings by CinExpert/Cinetel, this is the most important data to come from the study entitled “Today’s films, tomorrow’s viewers”. It’s a fresh perspective, offered up by AFIC – the Association of Italian Film Festivals together with Ergo Research, Cinetel/CinExpert and Consulta Universitaria di Cinema (the PDF file of the study can be downloaded here). In an in-depth article published on Fortune Italia Entertainment, Michele Casula - a partner at Ergo Research - stresses that “even though we’re dealing with a volume only equivalent to 3% of Cinetel’s overall ticket sales (in the rolling year running from March 2024 to February 2025), given the fact that festivals are still quite ‘patchy’, only running in certain periods and regions, this is a particularly interesting finding, not least because viewings at festivals are increasing by over 4% (compared to the previous 12 months) in a period when, according to Cinetel, overall film viewings stand at -3.2%”.

Another important finding is that 78% of titles screened by festivals are very recent (dating from either the same or the previous year), almost 30% are documentaries and 11% are animations. There’s a healthy balance between feature films and short films (45% and 55% respectively), and 29% of feature films enjoyed subsequent cinema distribution, drawing an average audience of over 62,000 viewers and earning around 390,000 euros.

The study – which addressed festival heads signed up to AFIC (118) – reports back on the most critical issues, which primarily relate to publication times for ministerial calls for submissions (73%), delivery times for ministerial finance (52%) and time spent looking for private sponsors (71%). “Sector operators”, remarked AFIC Chair Pedro Armocida, “don’t often have any certainty around public funding, and it becomes difficult to organise an event without this certainty. But the survey findings also call for greater efforts from film festivals either to identify private resources or to implement virtuous economic policies which incentivise ticket sales, for example”. 

The data also highlights how, on average, the festivals concerned have a 25-year history and take place annually; an average of 28 people are involved in the organisational phase (this number rises in the final phase of the survey) and this figure almost doubles when the event is actually unfolding (mostly owing to volunteer support). Roughly a quarter of festivals report budgets of over €200,000 (the estimated average is around €120,000), while 4 festivals out of 10 have seen their budgets increase over time. The Italian Regions and the Ministry for Culture are the biggest festival funders, accounting for almost half of all finance awarded; public bodies account for almost 70%; private sponsors only provide 15%, while revenue from ticket sales remains marginal at 5%. Festivals’ main expenses are associated with the presence of guests (travel, hotels and restaurants), internal staff, cinemas and technical equipment, communications (including the acquisition of media space) and catalogues, programmes and signage.

As summarised by Michele Casula: “Festivals tell a story of delivered promises (vis-a-vis the public), which looks to foster organisational and budget-related conditions which allow us to renew these promises comfortably year in, year out. It’s an approach which is best applied to private sponsorship (because it’s worthwhile investing in experiences which are worth something), to public funders (who could streamline the time it takes them to offer help, as a minimum), and to public support, in terms of viewers for whom there’s room to strike a better balance between what we offer and what people are asking for”.

(Translated from Italian)