A Festival involving the whole region

On several occasions I experienced the TrentoFilmfestival as a filmgoer and I have always appreciated its ability to capture, put forward and understand through cinema, testimonies and open debates, the culture of the mountain in all its parts - news, contamination, but also its ability to be renewed in a whole natural way around its most classic topics.

This year hundreds of movies have been submitted, more than 330, a record participation.  They have been carefully selected to present to the public a quality programme full of special evenings, events and touching moments.

This year the TrentoFilmfestival will take place over twelve intense days at the Modena cinema, the S. Chiara Auditorium, The Parco dei mestieri della montagna (the Mountain craft park), the city buildings that host several meetings, the squares and many other locations. The staff worked on a programme designed to satisfy the interests of a diverse audience, expanding the cultural horizon of the genre.

In the last years all this has proved to be a winning approach and not only do the numbers confirm this, but also the surveys carried out independently of the organisation (Observatory for Tourism, University of Trento) which in the last two years have been canvassing the audience for their choices and preferences. In this way we have found that more and more people decide every year to come to Trento on the occasion of this festival, which brings direct and indirect economic advantages to the city, which are two times greater than the costs.

My intention is that the festival will be more and more warmly received by the public and that it will involve more and more the audience and fans, particularly the young people who live in the valleys in close relationship with the mountain. And then there will be the virtual audience, that although not being physically at the meetings and screenings in Trento, will be able to surf the TrentoFilmfestival website, watching from the web TV clips of the movies in competition and the interviews with our guests. Many people are already using the website: there were 210,000 clip viewings in 2008, thus establishing the success of an initiative that no other festival has previously offered and which is already being imitated.

Egidio Bonapace
TrentoFilmfestival President