The cinematic sea of ShorTS 2023 has a narrative circumference bordered by waves of complementary visions, formats, genres, styles, in a wide-ranging programme that navigates diverse topical issues. Here is news of further competitive sections of short films alongside the Maremetraggio pillar, this time full of “only” fifty shorts from around the world: welcome to the newborn ShorTS Express with nineteen very short shorts, to the expansive environment of eight Eco-ShorTS, to the area of sixteen Italia in ShorTS. Sowing the seeds of the Shorter Kids’n’Teens pairing starts again with ten+ten stories chosen by children and teens for jurors and audiences of their own age. The Focus on a Country this year is Hellenic and has nine works, seven others bear the EFA circuit mark. The ShorTS Development & Pitching Training workshop is back to prepare filmmakers for setting out their projects before producers and distributors. The evolution of the ShorTS Virtual Reality section continues using individual viewers yet with screen neighbours, as well as with a panel and workshop. Another new feature is Campolungo, a focus on a filmmaker: we begin with Adriano Valerio, the multi-award-winning cine-voyager whose six shorts and the feature film Banat – Il viaggio will be presented in order to discuss how and why he has ploughed the two fields. As many as fifty-one cartoonists have registered for the new ShorTS Comics Marathon relay inspired by film classics to be redrawn on the fly. The ShorTS 2023 awards: Cinema del Presente Award to Stefano Savona, a documentary filmmaker/seer with an empathetically objective view of areas and topical events (Kurdistan, Palestine, Egypt, political Palermo, Bergamo assailed by the pandemic); Interprete del Presente Award to the exemplary analytical-communicative control of Fabrizio Gifuni, the Aldo Moro State martyr in Marco Bellocchio’s masterful Esterno notte for which the actor has just won David di Donatello and Nastro d’Argento awards. Premio Prospettiva Award in the wake of notable discoveries made by the festival since 2009 to the already malleable and newly charismatic Massimiliano Caiazzo, who made an impact in the series Mare fuori and the film Piano piano. Enticing spectators who want to choose what to be told in a cinema-theatre, in a revolving immersion, on a blank sheet of paper, in a Giardino Pubblico.
