"Cinema is made of places and spaces to be experienced ," explains Michelangelo Messina, artistic director of the Ischia Film Festival, " but it has also always been an essential vehicle for developing reflections and analyses on the key critical issues of our society and our lives ." With these words, Messina introduces Location Denied, a collateral section yet central to the festival's philosophy: a narrative space dedicated to marginalized perspectives, forgotten environments, and the invisible places of our social geographies.
Short Films: Childhood and Adolescence Beyond the Visible
Seven short films in competition this year, united by a transversal theme: childhood and adolescence lived in spaces of discomfort and uncertainty. Settings that become part of the story itself, projecting the young protagonists into harsh, often ruthless contexts.
From Subways to Rubble: Tales of Survival
In Lima, Giulia Bettaglio’s first work, the Milan subway becomes the scene of a fight for survival. In Amusement Park by Egidio Prudenzano, the abandoned construction sites of China are transformed into symbols of emptiness and disillusionment. The same wounds are found in Clear Sky by Polish Marcin Kundera, among rubble and war trauma, and in Ya Hanouni, where the conflict enters homes without warning, devastating lives and futures.
Visual journeys between closed spaces and broken horizons
In Jin Hongde’s Neverland, a restless visual atlas takes shape between dream and desperation, while Perla Geagea’s The Past Is Calling tackles domestic violence in a claustrophobic crescendo. Closed spaces, both physical and mental, become the very essence of the story.
Feature films: between civil commitment and collective memory
The selection of seven feature films amplifies the festival's gaze: films that combine form and content, style and denunciation. Works that traverse history, politics and contemporaneity, giving voice to new forms of social narration.
Italian Works: Gaza and Sicily, Borders of Our Time
A Man Fell by Giovanni C. Lorusso takes the viewer to the Gaza Hospital in Sabra, among the ruins of memory and illusions of the future. In Spiaggia di vetro by Will Geiger, Sicily confirms itself as a land of passage and suspension, a mirror of the migratory dynamics that cross Europe.
Borders and migrations: the view widens
Agnieszka Zwiefka's Silent Trees tells the story of a fragile adolescence along the Polish-Belarusian border, while Oceania addresses the climate emergency and environmental exile through the story of islands at risk of disappearing.
Aesthetics, Memory and Resistance: Visions from the World
Montenegro's Nikola Vukcevic, with Obraz, offers an epic tale with a strong humanistic impact. In Prison Beauty Contest, Bosnian Sdran Sarenac reflects on aesthetics and detention, transforming a beauty contest into an existential metaphor. The festival closes with Por tu bien by Argentine Axel Monsù, between rituality and a possible female and social redemption.
A Human Atlas Between Distance and Emotional Proximity
The films in competition build a heterogeneous, emotionally cohesive atlas that crosses geographies and conflicts with a human and involved gaze. Each work tells a story, but also a time, a collective tension, a universal urgency of understanding and solidarity.
Ischia Film Festival 2025: an appointment between cinema and reality
The twenty-third edition of the Ischia Film Festival will be held from June 28 to July 5, in the evocative setting of the Aragonese Castle of Ischia. Under the direction of Michelangelo Messina, the festival is supported by MiC – Directorate General Cinema and Audiovisual, Campania Region, Film Commission Campania Region, BONACINA, BPER Banca, TRECCANI Esperienze and ViVeTech.
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The article is interesting and provides an overview of the festival, but there are some points that are not well clarified. For example, it is not clear how the short films were selected and what criteria were used.