On 20 May, the Berlinale’s European Film Market (EFM) organised a short press conference in the Italian Pavilion at the Marché du Film in Cannes, together with Cinecittà and the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Dennis Ruh, the director of the EFM, opened the event with some figures from last year: with a record-breaking 11,500 participants, 600 companies and 1,500 screenings, the 2023 European Film Market was the most successful edition so far. Italian participation contributed hugely to this: this year, more than 1,000 EFM participants and 60 of the companies taking part were from Italy.

After this announcement, Mariette Rissenbeek, managing director of the Berlin Film Festival, highlighted the long-standing connections between the Berlinale, the European Film Market and Italy: Italian filmmakers and actors have often played important roles at the Berlinale in the past – for example, Isabella Rossellini chaired the jury of the 61st edition in 2010. She also underlined that many of the most highly celebrated filmmakers are Italian, such as Federico Fellini and Roberto Benigni. And then came the big announcement: after Canada, Mexico, Chile, Norway and the three Baltic states in 2023, Italy will be the Country in Focus at the upcoming edition, which will unspool from 15-21 February 2024 in Berlin.

The EFM’s Country in Focus section was launched in 2017. Nicola Borelli, director general for Cinema and Audiovisual at the Italian Ministry of Culture, pointed out that Italy was supposed to be the Country in Focus in 2020, and that would have been the case had it not been for the pandemic bringing everything to a halt.

Roberto Stabile, head of Special Projects and Internationalisation at MiC and Cinecittà, the famous Italian film studio, underlined that Italy’s participation in the EFM as the Country in Focus would be “an important moment to turn the spotlight on [the audiovisual] industry in a period of great change and growth” as well as “a key opportunity to reinforce relations with [Italy’s] foreign partners” in the film industry.

You can read the full EFM press release here.