Last year’s festival, the 14th event, was a great success. You told me via the competition forms that you loved the festival and the films. That makes me proud and honoured to have steered this event for 10 years to its position as one of the major film festivals in New Zealand.
It is widely commented that Italian film, and the Italian film industry in general, is experiencing a renaissance. Over the past decade the Italian domestic audience has acquired a renewed appetite to see films about themselves, their lives, their troubles, their history, their country. This desire manifests itself equally in the younger generation; the demographic that had been written off as ‘fodder for Hollywood’. How wrong the industry was, as this is clearly not the case. Italians want to see Italian films.
You benefit from this abundance of new Italian film because there is a greater range for festival organisers to choose from. Which means the films that succeed in reaching the final programme are rich in variety and style; a select bunch that represents the best of film making and all the nuances of Italian life. This year’s selection does exactly that.