A whirl through the numbers

Giornate degli Autori 2024, our 21st edition: 10 films in competition, 1 closing film out of competition, 5 special events and 3 short films (two for the Miu Miu Women’s Tales showcase and one a tribute to the winner of Giornate 2022) – and all world premieres held at the Sala Perla, in agreement with Fondazione La Biennale. Plus 9 Venetian Nights at the Sala Laguna, the feature films ranging from fiction to documentaries and screened at the alternative space created jointly with Isola Edipo; one event to celebrate Emidio Greco (co-founder of our independent sidebar) on the 50th anniversary of his debut with Morel’s Invention in 1974, and another dedicated to the voices of Naples in memory of Gaetano Di Vaio and Enzo Moscato, with Dadapolis by Carlo Luglio and Fabio Gargano.

A new sidebar of Giornate for words and images, named Confronti, looks at themes, stories and films that draw us into the past and the future of the world we live in. Lastly, a Venice-wide commemoration – we join forces with the Mostra del Cinema and the Critics’ Week – of Massimo Troisi, 30 years after the world premiere of his final masterpiece, The Postman.

The competition lineup includes 5 first films, and 13 films in the Official Selection were made by women filmmakers (5 in competition and 8 in out of competition events). Five more women filmmakers are featured in Venetian Nights, where all titles on the lineup are world premieres, and Quasi a casa by Carolina Pavone (the section’s opening film) is an ensemble debut. The number of nationalities on the Giornate lineup has reached 27 this year, including a new entry: the Dominican Republic. 1,260 films were viewed by Giornate in 2024, between submissions and viewings at the leading film festivals and markets.

The Giornate lineup will take audiences on a journey high above far-flung lands and Europe as well, of course, with our continent more open than ever before to cultural exchanges, thanks in large part to the power of co-productions. It’s just this view from above, an acrobatic walk on the fine line between hope and utopia, that inspired the Giornate poster for 2024, designed by Francesca Gastone.

As always, our real stars are the filmmakers themselves who gift us with their vision, their discoveries, and so many emotions. There are artists dear to the sizeable community of cinephiles, such as the Quay Brothers, with a new feature film, after twenty years; the Canadian musician Peaches, as told by Marie Losier in an intimate film that will literally “sing”; or Chiara Francini, producer and star of The Open Couple, based on the play by Franca Rame and Dario Fo, directed for the occasion by Federica Di Giacomo (past winner of an Horizons Award); or else Argentina’s Laura Citarella, tapped by Miu Miu and Giornate for the Women’s Tales showcase; or Antonietta De Lillo, who wrote, directed and stars in the ironic autobiographical portrait The Eye of the Hen. But it’s a safe bet that still more of our auteurs will win over the aficionados, as has happened many times in our history. The list is long: among all, Xavier Beauvois, Emmanuel Mouret, Andrea Segre, Jean-Marc Vallée, Rahmin Bahrani, Uberto Pasolini, Denis Villeneuve, Edoardo De Angelis, Hiam Abbass, Ava DuVernay, Leyla Bouzid, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Dag Johan Haugerud, and Josh and Benny Safdie. Not to mention the six winners of the Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film in Venice who came out of past Giornate lineups.

Promoted by ANAC and 100autori and headed by Francesco Ranieri Martinotti (President) together with Giorgio Gosetti (General Delegate) and Gaia Furrer (Artistic Director), Giornate degli Autori owes its independence to the support of the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate General for Cinema, SIAE – Società Italiana Autori ed Editori and Lavazza for the first time in La Casa degli Autori, while we have worked with Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia since 2004. Historic partners, by now, of Giornate include Creative Partner Miu Miu, for the Women’s Tales project; Europa Cinemas and Cineuropa (for the decade-long GdA Director’s Award); Isola Edipo (with whom Giornate has revitalized the Sala Laguna, among other things); plus the Laguna Film Lab in Chioggia, I Wonderfull, and QMI.

Giornate also collaborates with Bookciak, Azione! and SNGCI on the pre-opening event on August 27th; with Ente dello Spettacolo, Cinematografo and NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti for the Le Vie dell’Immagine Award which will be awarded to Marjane Satrapi on 3 September; with Ferrara Città del Cinema, on the exhibition dedicated to the painter and poster artist Anselmo Ballester; and with the In Progress workshop organized by the Milano Film Network. Giornate activities at “La Villa” (the iconic former headquarters of GDA) have been made possible thanks to a collaboration with GIH-Giffoni Hub.

“Giornate degli Autori is embarking on its third decade,” says Francesco Ranieri Martinotti, “which makes everyone who had a hand in founding the showcase very proud. It also prompts us to think about what our strong points and any weak points may have been over the years, in order to bring change to our event, while maintaining a continuity with the past. This assessment is at the heart of the mandate as president entrusted to me by the two associations promoting Giornate, 100autori e ANAC. This mandate calls for a fresh commitment to the artists, to protect their independence from any kind of censorship or other forms of undue influence.

“Giornate degli Autori was founded in 2004 to give voice to new talents and support the ongoing careers of established filmmakers as well, providing an original showcase that was a novelty at one of the world’s premier film festivals. It was a gamble we built our entire identity around, one we intend to relaunch on a changing film scene, more complex and fragile than it was back then. The fundamental support of the Ministry of Culture and SIAE, our partners since the very first edition, seems to espouse the vibrant direction we have consistently taken, one that the Biennale has always loyally shared, considering our independence a value added for the Venice Film Festival as a whole. My thanks today go to Gaia Furrer, Giorgio Gosetti, Vice President Giacomo Durzi, all the board members and partners of Giornate, and the magnificent team that creates the event each year; while I wish to commemorate Andrea Purgatori: co-founder, extraordinary president, partner-in-crime, and friend.”

“The identity of Giornate,” adds Giorgio Gosetti, “is not constructed with the search for just the presentation of original films and artists alone. Within the Venice Film Festival, we represent a free-standing space for words and images, a place where, each year, we find our bearings in the present, a vision of the future, and the memory of the roots we share. For this reason, we are launching the new sidebar ‘Confronti – Side By Side’, which celebrates the ‘otherness’ of our offerings and will be inaugurated on August 28th to the potent, unmistakable voice of Tahar Ben Jelloun, as a reminder that without culture and respect for the dignity of others, no peace will return to our war-torn world. At Confronti, we’ll be discussing copyright, censorship, diversity, young people’s rights, dreams and immigration, artificial intelligence, the pursuit of happiness, and the legacy of the past – in words accompanied by images, stories and films, since cinema can show and even herald the themes behind the paradoxes of our times.”

“Our lineup is rigorous, lean, and stylistically eclectic,” explains Gaia Furrer, by way of an introduction, “one that puts stories about people front and center: their encounters, relations, breakups, and losses. It features places and environments the majesty of which (from the Swiss Alps and the Mongolian steppes to the dunes of Colombia and tropical islands) often dominates human affairs. There are stories and reports of a world on fire, from Russia or Georgia to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and from Sudan to Ukraine and the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Stories of struggling with authority without neglecting the everyday foibles of individuals who continue to love, fight, fall in love, and drift apart. I feel I should point out the record number of women directors, sixteen in all, out of a total of twenty-five titles (as well as the women auteurs of Miu Miu Women’s Tales). Mainly because many of them made difficult films under trying circumstances in which gender is still a  barrier.”

This edition of Giornate degli Autori is dedicated to Maria Teresa Pizzetti.