FESTIVALS Italy
The Europe of the young at Giffoni
by Gabriele Barcaro
11/07/2007 - Opened by the premiere of the latest Harry Potter film, the 37th edition of the Giffoni Film Festival through July 21 brings together through its traditional young and very young audiences.
The 2,000 young jury members, who come from over 30 countries (for the first time Moldavia, Malta and Greece as well) must judge the films of the five competitive sections: Kidz (for 6-9 year-olds), First Screen (9-12), Free to Fly (12-14), Y Gen (for adolescents up to the age of 19); and Sguardi inquieti, which breaks with a 30 year-old taboo and will be voted on by adults, but only those accompanied by a minor.
A teeming program thought up by Artistic Director Claudio Gubitosi is this year dedicated to the “boundary”: a physical space of separation as well as a meeting point between cultures and the fine line between childhood and adulthood.
Alongside titles already released in Italy in recent months (Cristiano Bortone’s Red Like the Sky [trailer], Four Minutes [trailer] by Chris Kraus), there are also many celebrated premieres, most notably Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis [trailer, film focus], an award-winner at Cannes. Analogous themes and 2D animation approach also features in the French/Belgian A l’ombre du voile by Arnaud Demuynck, the most anticipated of the Boundaries section dedicated to European shorts.
There are numerous European offerings in the five competition sections. Kidz and First Screen confirm the particular attention towards films for the very young from Germany (with four titles, including Paulas Geheimnis by Gernot Krää) and Scandinavia while the first Mediterranean title requires a little more growing up, for the Free to Fly section, which features the premiere of Rosso Malpelo by Pasquale Scimeca (produced by the Palermo-based Arbash production cooperative), based on the eponymous novella by Giovanni Verga, but set in an unspecified time and place.
Then there is the very precise Sardinia of Jimmy della Collina by Enrico Pau, which – still awaiting distribution – is coming to Giffoni (in Y Gen) after its success at Locarno and Karlovy Vary.
The (out of competition) Italian selection is rounded out by Mineurs, a story of immigration from Lucania to Belgium in 1961 directed and produced by Fulvio Wetzl; and Senza amore by Renato Giordano (produced by Barcelona Entertainment in association with RAI Cinema), a debut film on difficulty in accepting one’s own sexual identity.
(Translated from Italian)
