International Documentary
Film Festival

Florence, 1st- 7th November 2009

festival sections

• Official Selection: Feature Documentary Competition

  A selection of seventeen films judged by a five member Jury who will award the following prizes: Best Documentary (10,000 Euro); Best Director (5,000 Euro); the “Gian Paolo Paoli” Prize for Best Ethno-Anthropology Film; and the Award for Distribution in collaboration with the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo.

• Official Selection: Short Doc Competition

  A selection of sixteen films will compete for the Lorenzo de’ Medici/Università di Firenze Award for 2,500 Euro, selected by a jury of seven students and overseen by a well-known teacher in the field.

• Official Selection: Free Style

  A non-competitive section of twelve films, Free Style includes special events and festival previews, as well as an homage to Alvaro Bizzarri, and «Soundtracks», a selection of documentaries from the five continents that explore the relationship between music and the environs that produce it.

• Thomas Heise: Materials of Time

  The first Italian retrospective of the German filmmaker. Auteur of a filmography that blends political analysis, autobiography, social investigation, experimentation and environmental study, Thomas Heise has documented the change of power from GDR Germany to the collapse of the wall and the subsequent reunification.

• The Feeling of Being There. 1958-1965: Seven Years of Documentary Cinema

  A retrospective of twenty-four short films that have changed documentary film history in a period of great creative fervor corresponding to the birth of the Festival dei Popoli. In honor of its Fiftieth anniversary, a significant journey through the creative forces that have crossed (and continue to cross) modern cinema.