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FESTIVALS Italy

Giffoni: “A young but mature festival”

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“The Giffoni Film Festival is mature, but it’s never been so young!” says artistic director Claudio Gubitosi, who 38 years ago founded the first Italian event “dedicated to films for young people, as everywhere these kinds of films were snubbed or relegated to weak niches”.

But that was a long time ago. Since then the festival has grown and the Ministry of Culture’s General Direction for Cinema (GDC) now finances it generously. “It is the festival that receives the most money after the Venice Film Festival, it’s the feather in our cap,” says GDC Director General Gaetano Blandini.

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The major studios now even consider it a launching pad for their slates. Case in point: this year’s edition (to be held July 18-26) will feature the highly anticipated The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and the comedy Meet Dave with Eddie Murphy.

Besides international stars (which this year include Meg Ryan and Abigail Breslin, as well as British actor Tim Roth), Europe, especially the north, is a major force in the festival’s five competition sections (which are judged by over 2000 jurors from around the world, most of them youths): “Kidz” (for ages 6-9), “First Screens” (9-12), “Free to Fly” (12-14), “Y Gen” (for adolescents up to 17 years old) and “Troubled Gaze” (the only section for adults).

Italian cinema is present in competition with Mario Cambi’s animated film La storia di Leo (featuring the voices of Neri Marcorè and Leo Gullotta), as well as Luigi Falorni’s Heart of Fire [+see also:
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(produced with German and Austrian funds and seen at this year’s Berlinale); while Enrico Lo Verso stars in Mirush [+see also:
film review
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, by Norway’s Marius Holst.

Scandinavia, on the other hand, takes pride of place this year. The region offers films for the entire family (such as Stig Svendsen’s The Radio Pirates), as well as dramas such as Klaus Härö’s The New Man [+see also:
trailer
film profile
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, the story of a young girl institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital in 1970s Sweden.

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(Translated from Italian)

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