On the occasion of the Giffoni Film Festival (17-25 July), Cineuropa sat down with Luigi Sales to take stock of the Giffoni Innovation Hub’s activities. From scouting young talent to producing documentaries, Sales outlines the results achieved and the challenges that remain.

Cineuropa: Last year you told us about a matchmaking platform for young screenwriters, conceived as a kind of “LinkedIn for the audiovisual sector”. Has it actually been launched?
Luigi Sales: The platform has not been launched yet. We consciously chose to slow down its development because we realised real value doesn’t lie in the technology, but in the quality of the relationships it’s able to generate. Over the past few months, we’ve worked with writers, producers and broadcasters to better understand the sector’s needs and dynamics. Today, we’re rethinking the project as a tool that facilitates effective meetings between talent and industry, so that it isn’t reduced to a database of profiles.

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Avrei questa idea has reached its second season and expands the field to under-36s. What did you learn from the first edition?
The first edition confirmed that there’s a strong demand for opportunities to engage with the market in a qualified way. We saw writers improve in their ability to present and structure their ideas, while several projects began in-depth development with the producers and partners involved. The extension to under-36s stems from the desire to include a group of professionals who are often already creatively mature, but still struggle to access industry circuits. We’re currently considering how to put together the third season and which new elements to introduce.

This year you’re launching Avventure in Primo Piano, a call launched in league with Avventure nel Mondo which selects four directors under 40 to make travel documentaries. Why did you choose the documentary genre as a scouting tool, and what kind of perspective are you looking for, beyond merely recounting an exotic experience?
Documentary is one of the freest and most contemporary languages for observing reality. We’re not looking for postcards or exotic tales, we’re looking for authors capable of grasping the essence of places through the people who live in and move through them. The decision to work with Avventure nel Mondo comes from its idea of what travel is: a shared experience in which a group of strangers builds relationships, trust and a common perspective, day by day. It’s that individual and collective transformative dimension that we’re interested in portraying. We ask directors for a perspective that doesn’t only look at the landscapes, but at what happens between people, because the most meaningful journeys often take place within relationships and in how these change our view of the world.

Il Dono delle Storie, made with UniCredit, brings three documentaries dedicated to the Third Sector to the festival. How do you prevent a commissioned project turning into an uplifting institutional video, rather than a work capable of forging a genuine connection with audiences?
The difference lies in the approach. We don’t start from the message we want to convey, but from people and their stories. We ask directors to seek out conflict, complexity and authenticity, because these are the elements that create engagement. When an organisation agrees to question itself and tell its story without celebratory filters, the result is a work that can speak to audiences well beyond the objectives of institutional communication.

In this sense, how do you choose the organisations to portray and what degree of editorial freedom do you leave to the directors?
In the case of UniCredit, we launched Il Dono delle Storie, a call aimed at Third Sector organisations across Italy. The response was considerable, and the selection process focused on organisations who could have a concrete impact on their territories, with particular attention paid to those working with younger generations and fostering inclusion, participation and growth. But from that point onwards, our approach changes: we don’t ask directors to produce an institutional piece, we ask them to tell a story. We share objectives and values with the organisations involved, but we leave full creative freedom to the authors. We believe that the strength and credibility of a documentary lie in the possibility of developing a personal outlook, capable of conveying the complexity of people and experiences without bending them to a celebratory narrative.

Le Porte di Napoli uses the audiovisual medium to get young migrants and second-generation youngsters involved. In projects where you’re working with potentially vulnerable communities, how do you approach representation and the risk of turning individual experiences into a pre-packaged message?
Our goal is to create the conditions for people to tell their own stories in the first person. We work through participatory processes in which the protagonists contribute to narrative choices and maintain an active role throughout. Avoiding stereotypes means forgoing simplification and making space for the complexity of individual experiences. In this way, the audiovisual medium becomes a tool for expression rather than an external representation. In the case of this project, the lead actress of the short film was selected from within the creative writing workshop. We also chose comedy as the tone of the story to move away from the idea of a dramatic or stereotypical narrative.

After a year, what most distinguishes Giffoni Innovation Hub from an ordinary creative agency or production company? And what’s the most concrete challenge involved in ensuring that youth participation translates into lasting professional and cultural opportunities?
I believe our value primarily emerges in projects connecting companies, institutions, creatives and young people within a single innovation process. We don’t just produce content: we build pathways where creativity becomes a tool for participation, growth and professional development. The most important challenge today is taking another step forward: bringing this model into the audiovisual market and involving broadcasters, platforms and distributors in an increasingly systematic way. If we genuinely want youth participation to result in professional opportunities, the industry also needs to invest more in creative risk and first works. Our goal is to build an ecosystem in which young people don’t just take part in a project or a workshop, but where they have the chance to make their first work, test themselves against the market and become the talented individuals who’ll lead the sector in the coming years.