Giffoni Film Festival 2022

Festival Report  - Agnes Maagaard Petersen / Unkraut

Giffoni Film Festival in Italy is a wonderful Film Festival. The cinemas are always full with hundreds of children, who watch the films with great attention and who in the end of the screenings ask interesting questions to the film makers about the film and film making in general. It is very nice to experience a festival that is not only for film makers, but that takes the audience outside the industry - in this case children - very seriously. As a film student it was a very special experience for me.

I was there for the last two days of the festival. I flew to Naples with my Assistant Director Sarah Miro Fischer and we were picked up by a driver to take us to the festival, which is an hour outside Naples. We checked into a hotel and from there we could take shuttle busses to the festival area. During the first day we went to the different cinemas, which were all right next to each other, and watched feature films and blocks of short animated films. In the day it was hard to find the other film makers due to the massive crowds of children, but both evenings we were invited for dinner and party in an old monastery-looking courtyard right next to the festival area. It was a beautiful scenery with a great Italian buffet, pizza oven, a bar and a DJ. Here we met the other film makers and also the young staff from the festival, who was very engaged in the films.

The second day we were there - and the last day of the festival - we had a full program from morning to evening. They had arranged that every block of short films had their picture taken and afterwards were two screenings with Q&A. In the categories for children under 10, they had dubbed the films in Italian and for the films for children over 10, they had made Italian subtitles. For the Q&A there was a translator by my side, to translate the questions from the kids and my answers to them. It all worked very well. In the evening there was a big Award Show, where the winners of the prizes were announced. All the winners were chosen by a jury consisting of children in the age group the film was made for.

Thank you to AG Kurzfilm for funding my travel to Giffoni!