Fifteen films (five each in three categories) have been picked for the official selection of the 4th Giffoni Macedonia Youth Film Festival, set to take place on Oct. 21-26 in Skopje.
The film festival is supported by the Film Agency of Macedonia and the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy.
The Cinematheque of Macedonia will host activities of the junior selections (children aged 10 to 13), while cadets (ages 14 to 16) and seniors (16-18) will attend events organized at the Youth Cultural Center.
The Giffoni Macedonia festival opens on Friday at the Millennium Theater with a screening of Matteo Rovere’s Italian Race – Fast Like The Wind, and closes on Oct. 26 with an awards ceremony.
This year the festival offers a ‘solid’ programme including mainly films that have been admitted by some of the biggest and most influential film festivals in the world as well as youth film festivals, according to Darko Basevski, executive director of Giffoni Macedonia and official representative of the Giffoni Film Festival in Macedonia.
“The selection includes films from Italy, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Brazil and Nepal, which has been submitted for Oscar consideration. I hope young people will not only have fun watching these movies, but they will also have something to discuss about,” said Basevski.
The festival’s international jury will be comprised of at least 550 children and youth from Macedonia, Italy, Croatia, Romania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the United States, Great Britain and Albania, divided into three age-appropriate categories.
In addition to the 15 films in official selection, this year’s Giffoni Macedonia also includes a revue programme with two Macedonian features (Igor Ivanov’s Upside Down and Vladimir Blazevski’s Punk’s Not Dead), four short Macedonian films and five animated movies made in Italy.
Moreover, the Film Agency of Macedonia has been given the right to continue to use the Giffoni brand and logo in the country until 31 December 2018 as stipulated by the three-year agreement signed with Italy’s Giffoni Experience this year.
