Presentation

ShorTS is turning into an extended, circular festival structured into complementary visions, formats, genres, styles, discoveries, presences. In the programme (prepared with the festival’s keystone, Chiara Valenti Omero, together with our cohesive working supergroup) there are obviously many short stories of varied origins and themes: eighty-one shorts from around the world in the Maremetraggio competition section, sixteen in Focus Israel,both historical and recent, eight the EFAs, twenty-three in Shorter Kids’n’Teens selected and judged by the kids and teens themselves, eight in the competition, those to be seen in their entirety alone but also in groups within the space of shifting virtual reality. Also a number of feature films: seven in the international Nuove Impronte section. The reworked, themed comic marathon marked by creativity with a relay of wipe boards between the participating artists and the three-day Shorts Development & Pitching Training workshop for short film projects.

The awards of ShorTS International Film Festival 2022: Cinema del Presente Award for the courageous, inventive and highly skilled director-writer-producer-musician Gabriele Mainetti; Attrice del Presente Award (new) for the extraordinary and eclectic actress with her solid artistic chemistry, Teresa Saponangelo, in the last twelve months honoured with two Nastri d’Argento and a David di Donatello; Premio Prospettiva award for the emotional energy and precocious expressive maturity of Aurora Giovinazzo, who made a name for herself in Mainetti’s Freaks Out. A polymorphous journey consistent with the nature and geopolitical and cultural weight of Trieste, a city of intertwined borders, at times displaced by history, a crossroads of encounters and acquaintances, fibrillations and art, where monuments, streets, hills and palaces have been telling unique and universal stories for centuries. In this theatre with no more curtains, our unconventional yet meticulous festival starts from the widest possible cinema to arrive at arousing the curiosity and entertaining individual viewers currently dazed by too many (often disturbing) images but who, we believe, are people still interested in being able to choose their own filmed tale that will make them smile, lose themselves and reflect.

Maurizio di Rienzo
Artistic director of ShorTS IFF