This year’s edition of the Giffoni Film Festival will run from 17-25 July in Giffoni Valle Piana under the theme Le cose impossibili (Impossible Things). This year’s edition will gather over 5,000 jurors from 35 countries and 500 towns and villages across Italy, who will assess 104 competing films: 42 features and 62 shorts. The programme, composed of films selected out of thousands of international submissions, will explore growth, personal identity, family ties, inclusion, mental health, environmental sustainability, memory and social inequality.

The feature competition stretches across the festival’s age-based sections. In Elements +6, titles include Edmunds Jansons’ Born in the Jungle, which is about a girl searching for her missing brother in the Venezuelan jungle; Rémy Schaepman and Léahn Vivier-Chapas’ debut Children of Liberty is set in New York in 1941; and Joona Tena’s Super Furball and the Lying Squirrel is a new eco-minded adventure in the Finnish franchise.

Elements +10 will include Arild Østin Ommundsen and Silje Salomonsen’s Back to Tottori, Markus Welter’s Alpine adventure Barry & Me, Christophe Barratier’s wartime drama Children of the Resistance, Katja Benrath’s Just Call Me Frida, Janne Schmidt’s King of the Wanderers, Marie Limkilde’s debut Mira and Irene Iborra’s Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake.

The Generator strands will move into more complex adolescent and young-adult territory. Generator +13 will feature Piotr Domalewski’s The Altar Boys, Myrsini Aristidou’s debut Hold Onto Me, Juan Cabral’s Risa & the Wind Phone, Carol and Marina Rodríguez Colás’ Bros, Allan Deberton’s Gugu’s World and Lance Daly’s Irish music-themed Trad. Generator +15 will include Mees Peijnenburg’s A Family and Fernanda Tovar’s Sad Girlz, among others, whilst Generator +18 will spotlight seven features, six of them debuts, including Miroslav Terzic’s 3 Weeks After, Bérangère McNeese’s The Girls from Above and Emilie Thalund’s Weightless.

Documentary will be represented through the GEX DOC section, whose titles include Amy K Jenkins’ Adam’s Apple, which focuses on a transgender teenager and their family support; Lia Hietala and Hannah Reinikainen’s Almost Forever, which follows five years in the lives of a group of adolescents; Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ One in a Million, which centers on a young Syrian refugee; Lucas Paleocrassas’ Bugboy; and Eliza Capai’s The Fabulous Time Machine.

Alongside the competition, Giffoni will host previews and special events, including George Jaques’ opening film Sunny Dancer with Bella Ramsey also attending; DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island, with character-animation head Sean Sexton; Disney’s live-action Oceania; Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters; and LAIKA’s Wildwood – I segreti del bosco proibito. Italian titles and projects will include Berardo Carboni’s Greta e le favole vere, Paola Randi’s Se domani non torno and Margherita Ferri’s Piercing.

Television will also have a visible presence, with previews and events dedicated to Ivan Silvestrini’s teen drama Minerva – La Scuola, Rainbow’s Winx Club – The Magic Is Back, Sky Original’s Nord Sud Ovest Est – La leggendaria storia degli 883 and Rai’s long-running Naples-set soap opera Un posto al sole.

Industry-facing activity will include workshops for 200 aspiring actors and actresses, alongside the School Experience Festival – part of Italy's national Cinema per la Scuola plan – which selected 71 works from more than 2,500 submissions. Other parts of the wider programme will include IMPACT!, live music, wellbeing, food events and open-air screenings.