Massimiliano Fedriga
Governor of the Autonomous Region Friuli Venezia Giulia
Closed theatres, postponed shootings and canceled or suspended film festivals are now just a bad memory. How reassuring it is to pick up on the packed schedules of events (both online and on-site) in our region!
Among them, there's the 37th edition of the Ibero-Latin American Film Festival in Trieste, the only one in Italy devoted entirely to Latin American and Iberian cinematography, as well as one of the longest in Europe along with the Huelva Festival in Spain.
Friuli Venezia Giulia is delighted to welcome all the key figures, professionals working in the world of cinema and guests to an event that aims at making the seventh art a noble tool able to shift the focus, especially that of young people, to some important social, historical and cultural issues related to Latin America reality, strengthening the bond that we share with that area of the world.
Hundreds of movies from 18 countries in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, animation, television series, documentaries, and feature films: after all, this festival is a real journey throughout the Latin American audiovisual world.
In recent years the Festival has been able to begin several collaborations, even with the school community: from the United World College of the Adriatic (Mundo Latino Award) to high schools in Trieste and Veneto in which Spanish and/or Portuguese are taught (Malvinas Award), to Liceo Artistico Nordio in Trieste (Youth Jury).
Thanks to the vibrancy, the quality and the longevity of the festivals that take place in our region, we can say that Friuli Venezia Giulia is becoming more and more a land where cinema can be created. It's an outpost of cinematic trends, a hub of studies and an unparalleled collection of historical and contemporary material. This also makes it a highly attractive region for tourism.
In its online Cinematheque, which reaches an average of 29,000 visits per month, the Festival created visibility spaces for PromoTurismoFVG, an initiative aimed specifically at making a major impact on tourism in the city.
In conclusion, in order to increase international visibility of this event and to promote the city of Trieste and Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Festival reached important and ambitious agreements with Ventana Sur and with EFilm, with the purpose of offering job opportunities for all those young people who collaborate with the Festival in the subtitling field.
Happy viewing to all!
Tiziana Gibelli
Regional Councillor for Culture and Sport
Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia
The Ibero-Latin American Film Festival held in Trieste is one of the most eagerly-waited and now established cultural events, among the ones that take place in our region. Friuli Venezia Giulia is honored to host an event that over the years has established itself as the main showcase in Italy that explores Latin American cinema and more. Undoubtedly, it can be conceived as an appointment with art and film culture, but it’s also one of the best opportunities to promote and enhance the regional territory and the city of Trieste on a national and international level.
The Festival is among the longest-running cultural events in Italy, and that's proven by its 37 editions, which each autumn present to the public a rich program and collateral events exploring the movies in competition and those out of competition.
Trieste and its beauty are thus ready to welcome artists and all those who are keen on cinema to a festival that grows in importance year after year—thanks to all its faithful organizers—contributing in a decisive way to implement and spread culture.
As the Councillor for Culture of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, I can only thank the organizers and hope that the 2022 edition will be even more successful than the previous ones, while to all of you gathered here I wish you to enjoy it.
Roberto Dipiazza
Mayor of Trieste
TRIESTE AND THE IBERO-LATIN AMERICAN FESTIVAL: A RELATIONSHIP THAT CONSOLIDATES AND STRENGTHENS FILM CULTURE BETWEEN TRADITION, HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE
Animations, television series, documentaries, feature films and retrospectives, for a total of about a hundred films, make up the rich and articulated programme of the 37th edition of the Ibero-Latin American Film Festival that Trieste is once again and with pleasure preparing to welcome, renewing the value of a profound friendship that characterizes the bond between this historic and traditional event and our City.
Together we have worked for many years and continue to do so, consolidating and strengthening a relationship that continues to bear excellent fruit and which is the truest and most concrete testimony of how well you have been able to work, realizing a wide-ranging project, able to look ahead, to confront and open up to future challenges.
You have overcome difficult moments and others await you, but I am certain that thanks to your constant commitment and the wealth of knowledge and professionalism that belongs to you, you will succeed even more and even better in offering that traditionally open 'window' on the entire audiovisual world from the American subcontinent, giving space to established and emerging cinematographies.
The Ibero-Latin American Film Festival of Trieste is, as is well known, the only event in Italy entirely dedicated to Latin American cinematography and one of the longest-running and most appreciated in Europe. It is an event that Trieste feels close to and is an active participant in, because it fosters and consolidates over time the internationality of our city, which certainly passes through its Port, science, research, innovation and tourism, but which is also and above all characterized by a strong cultural bond, where cinema perhaps represents that vital, immediate and increasingly important expression capable of bringing people together and welcoming them, of opening glances and interesting perspectives.
I would therefore like to thank the organizers and promoters of the XXXVII edition of the Festival for having proposed and realized a varied and complete programme, capable of combining the competitive sections of the official competition with a whole series of special events, appointments, and moments that underline the goodness and value of a festival capable of opening up and updating itself, of creating high-level culture, involving students, young people and attracting the attention of the many cinema enthusiasts who knows they can find a unique and special destination and reference point in Trieste.
Trieste has known and knows how to flow in the images of film and television thanks to significant productions made here. At the same time it knows and knows well the value of a Festival, such as the Ibero-Latin American Festival, capable of strengthening and promoting the culture of cinema, of giving further strength, impetus, and positive further opportunities to our city, promoting its image and its charm that deserves to be experienced and made known in the world. Because if “a film is life whose boring parts have been cut out”, a Festival is much more, it is a set of dreams that can offer opportunities and chances to those who have the courage to dare and go beyond reality.
Antonella Cavallari
IILA Secretary General
The IILA - International Italo-Latin American Organization renews with interest and conviction its collaboration with APCLAI and the Ibero-Latin American Film Festival, now in its XXXVI edition, held in Trieste. This year in particular, after the long months of lockdown and the severe restrictions imposed on the cultural sector, which has suffered profoundly, it is time to give strong and clear support to cinema, which, as a true cultural industry, is also able to contribute effectively to the revitalization of economic activities.
The Festival, thanks to the research work that allows the best of Latin American film production to be shown in Italy -exclusively and as premieres- has been consolidated over the years and has never lost its fundamental role as a connector with Latin American cinema and its rich production that, unjustly, found little space on the international scene.
In recent years, thanks in part to the constant activity of the Festival, Latin American cinema has been gaining greater recognition at the world's most prestigious festivals and expanding its participation in the international market, thanks in part to far-sighted cooperation policies, often consisting of programs to support co-production between Latin American and European countries. An excellent example of this is IBERMEDIA, the most important film cooperation program in the Ibero-American area, which Italy joined in 2016, becoming its largest contributor.
IILA, well aware of the importance of cinema in culture as well as in the economy, intends to contribute to the promotion of the Latin American film industry in Italy through innovative cooperation projects intended to nurture creative exchange and help the region's productions finally enter a wider distribution circuit. At the start of the post-pandemic recovery phase, the IILA has therefore launched the IILA-Cinema Prize, intended to highlight the most deserving of Latin American filmmakers under 35, who will also be offered adequate visibility through collaboration with the prestigious Rome Film Festival and a useful in-depth academic training in filmmaking.
In addition, as the Festival is very clear about, cinema makes it possible to bring to the attention of society, especially young people, fundamental social, historical and cultural issues and to bring audiences from geographic areas that are distant but deeply connected to Italy. The new agreements that the Festival has been able to sign to make films usable on online cinema platforms (Mowies.com, Efilm and Arcoiris TV) and the creation of the Festival's Film Library - a virtual archive of a thousand films available free of charge on the Internet - contribute even more, in an innovative and intelligent way, to facilitating this rapprochement.
Finally, also praiseworthy is the collaboration with the University of Trieste and the School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste and the University of Udine, as well as with the Latin American film and market event "Ventana Sur," which focus on the relevance of subtitling, both from the point of view of the film market, guaranteeing a useful tool for the distribution of films in Italy, and because it offers young people an opportunity for training and an interesting outlet on the job market.
Cinema, innovation, training, young people, cooperation: these therefore seem to be the key words of the new challenges that APCLAI, Ibero-Latin American Film Festival and IILA are undertaking for the enhancement of Latin American audiovisual production. A common goal that pushes us to renew a multi-year collaboration that is always alive and in step with the times.
