The 28th edition of the Umbria Film Festival will be held from 10 to 14 July 2024 in Montone and has a new artistic director, the journalist Alessandro de Simone, while the honorary president of the event is the actor, comedian and director Terry Gilliam, who has been for years also honorary citizen of the municipality in the province of Perugia.
The event was founded in 1997, thanks to the collaboration between the Umbria Film Festival Association, the Municipality of Montone and the Riverside Studios in London. This year too the festival will be made up of three main blocks.
The first is dedicated to feature films, international premieres screened indoors and outdoors in the beautiful complex of the Church of San Francesco. Amarcorti returns for the fourth year, a competition dedicated to Italian short films and, finally, the international competition of animated short films for children, called Montoons.
Umbria Film Festival, the words of the new artistic director
Alessandro De Simone, film critic and journalist, is editor of Ciak and collaborator of Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter Rome And La Gazzetta dello Sportas well as having collaborated over the years with L’Espresso a Gioia, GQ, Io Donna, Playboy, Best Movie And Empire. He founded in 2010 The Cinema Showthe first monthly cinema magazine in the world designed exclusively for iPad.
He has collaborated with numerous international festivals, from Locarno to Biografilm in Bologna via the Turin Film Festival. He is currently artistic consultant for Linea d’Ombra Festival Salerno, Bardolino Film Festival and Napoli Comicon. He has lived in London for 10 years.
“After many years working on the festival circuit, the opportunity to direct a prestigious festival like the Umbria Film Festival came like a bolt from the blue,” commented Alessandro De Simone. “It is my first artistic direction, it is a wonderful challenge for which I thank the Umbria Film Festival Association for the trust placed in me. I am already working to compose a program worthy of this event which has enormous prospects and which I hope to make grow as it deserves during this twenty-eighth edition and in the coming years”.
