Russia

By Daniele Ceccarini

Viviana Del Bianco is the director of N.I.C.E. Festival, an event whose purpose is to promote the new generation of Italian independent cinema abroad, from the United States to Russia, by presenting feature films among the best emerging independent Italian production.

It is a unique Festival, and since the beginning it manages to encompass several categories: films that participated in and won famous international Festivals (Matteo Garrone, Matteo Rovere, Paolo Sorrentino, Valeria Golino), documentary works, best short films by young directors, auteur cinema, and some movies that without this festival would remain unknown to a piece of the foreign audience.

N.I.C.E. represents an unconditional view on a new way of telling Italy through art and cinema. Thanks to meetings and seminars with students, critics, filmmakers, directors of other film festivals, cultural exchanges and workshops, N.I.C.E. remains faithful to the initial mission: to tell the new Italian cinema in the United States, Europe and Russia.

Unfortunately, the current emergency forces us to postpone the event to better times. We embrace the Russian audience with the hope of meeting again with a fortified and restored soul.

Despite the effort to carry on the N.I.C.E. Russia Festival 27th edition 2020 together with the Italian Cultural Institute of Moscow and Saint Petersburg and the Italian Embassies and Consulates, the new dispositions of the Russian government about the closure of cinemas force us to interrupt all the film screenings of the Festival, which had necessarily been reformulated without the presentations and meetings with Italian actors and directors.

The Festival is postponed to the summer months, following the confirmation by our local partners in view of the upcoming health status of the country.

The 27th Russia edition of the New Italian Cinema is ready to start! Despite the troubles that have arisen in recent weeks, it was our will, and that of all our partners, not to cancel the event, albeit making some adjustments to the initial project.

All dates are confirmed, Moscow (24/29 March), Saint Petersburg (26/30 March), Novosibirsk (1/3 April), but there will be no guests at the screenings. Even if it will be presented in a “special” form, this edition is important to us, since it is the first event of N.I.C.E.’s 30th year of activity.

The uniqueness of N.I.C.E. Festival has always been its ability to encompass several categories of Italian cinema: from movies that participated in and won famous international festivals (Matteo Garrone, Matteo Rovere, Paolo Sorrentino and Valeria Golino), to documentaries about the country’s social problems and collections of short films by young directors. The varied program does not fail to include a selection dedicated to auteur cinema, which includes some movies that without this festival would remain unknown, or almost, to the Russian audience.

But that’s not all: N.I.C.E. also means entering the physical dimension of the Italian-Russian cinema, with an unconditional glance on a new way of telling Italy. Thanks to workshops, meetings and seminars with students and with creators of other film festivals, N.I.C.E. remains faithful to its initial mission: to tell the story of the new Italian cinema.