festival sections

• Official Selection – Feature-length Documentary Competition

  A selection of fourteen documentaries, all Italian premieres. They will be judged by an International Jury made of three members that will assign the following prizes: Award for Best Documentary (€ 8,000), Award for Best Director (€ 3,500), the Plaque “Gian Paolo Paoli” for Best Ethno-anthropological Film. These films are also in competition for the Audience Award.

• Official Selection – Documentary Short Competition

  Italian premiere of thirteen short documentaries in competition for the Award for Best Short (€ 2,500), assigned by the International Jury, and for the Lorenzo de’ Medici Award (€1,000) assigned by the Students Jury.

• Official Selection – Out of Competition

  A cinematographic journey to reflect upon Revolution, Dissidence, Rebellion, and Pacifism both in democracies and in totalitarian regimes. These subjects, to be found throughout the entire Festival, are more deeply discussed in the Focus “Declining Democracy” and in the “Adotta un Doc” section.

• Focus: Declining Democracy

  The well-established collaboration between the Festival dei Popoli and CCC Strozzina – the Centre of Contemporary Culture based in Palazzo Strozzi – continues: the Festival will present a Focus with three films on the same subject of the new exhibition at CCC Strozzina: “Declining Democracy – Rethinking democracy between utopia and participation” (until January 22nd, 2012, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence).

• Official Selection – Panorama

  Documentary is now established as one of the glories of contemporary Italian cinema. Festival dei Popoli offers the authors an open space to discuss their work and meet the audience and other professionals. The section presents seven feature-length documentaries and one work in progress that represent the best of the 2011 national production. These films are in competition for the Audience Award.

• Swimming in a sea of images: the cinema of Isaki Lacuesta

  This is the first retrospective in Italy devoted to the Catalan film-maker who has made several films spanning fiction and documentary with an original and fascinating fusion of genres and languages. An event in collaboration with the Ramon Llull Institute, Catalan Films, and the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

• Portraits of the Body - A workshop with Isaki Lacuesta

  On the occasion of his retrospective, Isaki Lacuesta will hold a workshop in Florence entitled “Portraits of the body”. The event is organized with the support of Ramon Lull Institute, Barcelona.

• Special Events

  A lively musical documentary for the opening night, plus four films of certified entertaining value to celebrate documentary film at its peak.

• Adotta un Doc

  The two films in the section “Adotta un Doc”, an initiative launched last April, discuss the fight for civil rights and pacifism in the US. Two rare works coming from the Festival dei Popoli’s Archives, and presented thanks to the generosity of those spectators who, adopting our archive, allowed us to bring them back from darkness.