Eight works will compete for the prize of the 22nd edition of the Ischia Film Festival, scheduled in the spaces of the Aragonese Castle of Ischia from 29 June to 6 July 2024, with the support of the General Directorate of Cinema and Audiovisual of the MIC and the Campania Region. The selected films come from: Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Spain, the United States and Turkey. Amanece, by Juan Francisco Viruega, is an existentialist work set in Almeria, all female, about the return to her origins of a woman who finds herself with her sister and her dying mother, retying the threads of the past intertwined with the difficulties of the present. International preview.
The joyful innocence of the children of Taranto, in Bangarang, Giulio Mastromauro’s feature film debut. In the background the threatening Moloch of Ilva and the environmental and health disaster produced in 60 years of activity of the steelworks. Already a finalist this year at the Nastri d’Argento and winner of the Jury Prize at the Rome Film Festival, the film will also be presented in the coming weeks in competition at the BCT in Benevento and Filming Italy in Sardinia.
The theme of the festival is particularly focused “on the location and on the enhancement of the cultural and landscape identity of the territories chosen for filming”. Every year the festival rewards those cinematographic works that have promoted the territory and its cultural identity through film narration. It spreads and promotes “Cinetourism” (a neologism created by the creator of the project Michelangelo Messina) in Italy and around the world and rewards with the Foreign Award the Italian and foreign film productions that have contributed to promoting the Italian territory through audiovisual media.
Its peculiarity is that it has highlighted the importance of the “location” in the audiovisual work; it is no coincidence that the entire event takes place in an exceptional location: “The Aragonese Castle”. A superb manor house in the middle of the sea located in front of the island of Ischia and connected to it with a bridge of approximately 700 meters.
