Important news about the RIFF – Rome Independent Film Festival – the 12th edition of which, to be held from April 3rd– 11th at the Cinema Aquila in Rome, will be increasing its commitment in support of young filmmakers. A commitment that goes beyond the showcase of the festival. The big news is that three international distributors will be joining the jury.“They are Pascal Faure from Canal Plus, Philppe Kreuzer from Bavaria Media and Orsola Clausi from NBC Universal” announces Fabrizio Ferrari, the director of the RIFF who is currently involved in selecting the works, the list of which will be even longer this year. “The number of registrations received has almost doubled, there are nearly 2,000 movies, both feature length and shorts. As usual, we focus on Italian and international first and second works. We try to follow the directors, for example, by keeping an eye on the talents who have already taken part in the RIFF with a short and are maybe returning with their first feature movie. People like Daniele De Plano, who won the festival last year with Cardillo for ‘Ristabanna’ and had previously attended the RIFF with the short film ‘Regalo di Natale’; or Hedy Krissane who, after the short ‘Colpevole fino a prova contraria’, came back to the RIFF last year with ‘Aspromonte’.
Some very interesting Italian proposals are expected this year”,addsFerrari,andmentionssomeofthetit- les: “Carta Bianca” by Andres Arce Maldonado, “Happy Days Motel” by Francesca Strasch and “Spaghetti Story” by Ciro De Caro and “Transeuropae Hotel” by Luigi Cinque.
The prizes for the best Italian and foreign feature movie will be their theatrical distribution through the Microcinema circuit and the Cinema Aquila, which will both dedicate one week of screenings to the winning movie.
The RIFF is paying particular attention to distribution this year and it will also feature in the Forum on European productions to be held at the Casa del Cinema. Ferrari explains: “In the first part, five of the “Producers on the Move” from the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival will talk about their European production and co-production experiences. The second part, dedicated to distribution and, in particular, to online digital distribution, will involve the participation of OnAir, Microcinema, Telecom with Cubovision, Raimovie and AGPCI.
The RIFF is also working on launching a new portal, RomeFilmmarket.com, dedicated to paid online streaming, where it will be possible to see all the 6,000 or so movies on its database.
“We will probably present them at Cannes” says Ferrari. The portal is the latest step taken by the RIFF to support independent cinema.
“Around 5 years ago, seeing as there were practically no short film distributors in Italy and the few that were left were dying out, we began proposing packages of our titles to distributors rather like a sales agent. We sold them to Canal Plus, Rti Mediaset, Fox, Alitalia and the French portal Mubi, where we are the only Italian festival to sell streamed movies (it has 15 of our own shorts at a cost of 99 cents each and we make around 1,500 Euros a year).”
On Romefilmmarket.com shorts will also cost 99 cents each, documenta- ries €1.99 and features €2.99.
