The Festival

ShorTS – International Film Festival

Trieste, Italy, 1st-9th July 2016

XVII Edition

The XVII Edition of ShorTS International Film Festival is coming! The Festival, lauded in Italy and all over the world, will take place in Trieste, Italy, from 1^st  to 9^th July 2016, in the magnificent piazza Verdi.  As usual, we’ll be offering 9 days of excitement and promising new cinema.

Screening marathons, special events, workshops, cocktail parties, Q&As, meetings with actors and film-makers – we’ll have it all! The Festival is dedicated to emerging cinema, and always attracts many guests, new talents and film celebrities from all over the world, as well as tourists eager to enrich their stay in Trieste and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia.

Among the many great performers and directors who have participated in previous editions of the festival are:  Francesca Neri, Sergio Rubini, Barbora Bobulova, Chiara Caselli, Ambra Angiolini, Marco Giallini, Luca Marinelli, Lucia Mascino, Elena Radonicich, Andrea Bosca, Michele Riondino, Veronica Pivetti, Francesca Inaudi, Rocco Papaleo, Marina Massironi, Carolina Crescentini, Michele Alhaique, Christiane Filangieri, Gianfelice Imparato, Michele Venitucci, Alba Rohrwacher, Giuseppe Battiston, Margherita Buy, Amanda Sandrelli, Laura Morante, Federico Moccia, Murray Abraham, Gillo Pontecorvo, Giuliano Montaldo, Paola Cortellesi, Pippo del Bono.

Sections of  ShorTS  2016

Our traditional Maremetraggio section is reserved for short films which earned prizes and honorable mentions from international film festivals in 2015. All films in this section will compete for the Best Short Film Award (€ 5.000). Moreover, many other awards and prizes feature in this section, including:  Best Italian Film, Best Animated Short Film, People’s Choice Award and the AMC Award. There’s also the Studio Universal Award, a prestigious prize from our partners at Studio Universal (Mediaset on DTT), the movie channel brought to you by movie-makers. Winners of this prize will be win the chance to enter into a relationship with Studio Universal.

We are also happy to announce the return of the Last Chance section, which features recent (produced after January 2015) films that did not win any awards and do not exceed 10 minutes in length. Ten films from this section are selected to compete in the Maremetraggio Section of the Festival and will therefore be able to compete for its awards and prizes.

Spotlight on Young Talent

In the past, we’ve offered spotlights on famous Italian actors and actresses (Laura Morante, Margherita Buy, Sergio Rubini, Francesca Neri, Barbora Bobulova) and emerging new talents in Italian cinema (Elena Radonicich, Luca Marinelli, Michele Alhaique, Andrea Bosca, Michele Riondino, Alba Rohrwacher, Jacopo Olmo Antinori), who have gone on to be very successful. This year, ShorTS is inviting young, emerging talent from the Italian film industry to step into the spotlight along with the films starring said actors or actresses. Like every year public meetings will be scheduled, during which the protagonist of this year’s spotlight will tell their story and share their vision of the future of the film industry.

Focus on Foreign Cinematography

In years gone by, we have featured Japan, Kazakhstan and India in this section. This year, it’s the turn of a country slightly closer to home.

This year, in collaboration with BuSho (the Budapest Short Film Festival), ShorTS will stage an event dedicated to Hungary, its rich culture and, most of all, its excellent short films.

Even More OLTRE IL MURO

Associazione Maremetraggio, always striving to enhance its reputation as a social force in the local area, aims to bring cinema to those who need it. Since 2009, we have extended our programme of film screenings in the Casa Circondariale di Trieste (prison – T.N.). In 2012, as the initiative was receiving increasingly positive feedback from the inmates,  it became something bigger. We added educational value, as well as enough content to last the whole year. Thanks to the invaluable collaboration of Davide Del Degan and Festival President and Artistic Director Chiara Valenti Omero, we have organized a series of lectures and meetings with a view to educating the inmates about basic cinematographic notions, as well as encouraging them to turn to cinema production themselves. In addition, some of the inmates will be included on the jury for future editions of ShorTS, and will choose the winner of the OLTRE IL MURO Award.

Special Events

As evidenced in previous editions by the Videoarte Event in 2012 and the Fuoriscena exposition in 2013, Film Festivals can feature many art forms.  We’re to open to new artists from all over the world and ready to present their visions of art, no matter what form it may take.

We’re determined to have one evening of our Festival in the Bathhouse La Lanterna, using the floating screen for film screenings. The atmosphere of the evening will be even more magical thanks to the ambience of this special place, better known by locals as El Pedocin, the last bathhouse in Europe which separates the sexes, a tradition dating back to 1903 and regarded  by Triestines with a mix of pride and irony.

We’re also planning to organize a series of “cinematographic” walking tours of the city’s famous film locales. The tours will take in all of Trieste’s vistas, and will reveal many of the innumerable stories our beloved Julian city has to tell thanks to its history and unique geographical position between the West and the East. Trieste has charmed many outstanding artists: from Mauro Bolognini to Luchino Visconti,  from Cristina Comencini to Francis Ford Coppola, from Anthony Minghella to Giuseppe Tornatore. Our guide will be Nicola Falcinella, the well known Italian cinema critic.

Public Meetings and Workshops

ShorTS is a well-known supporter of young and talented film-makers, who usually start their careers with short films. By participating in our Festival, they can introduce their work to a new audience whilst simultaneously enhancing their portfolio of professional contacts. We’ll offer a way for those directors who want to present their work to the public and the press in order to show what goes into making a short film to do so.

Besides that, we will also organize a number of workshops and meetings with potential employers, during which discussions of “hot” topics in the film industry will be held.

Destination: Trieste, Piazza Verdi

One of our greatest strengths is, of course, the city itself. Situated by Italy’s easternmost border, between the Adriatic and the Karst Plateau, Trieste is an ideal place for a film festival.

Piazza Verdi, home of the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi, where three of our previous editions took place, has been chosen to hold our short film marathon once more.

Stay tuned for more news and get ready for the best edition of ShorTS yet!