OFFICIAL SELECTION
4 are the awards for which the 20 films in official selection compete:
1. Ennesimo Critics Prize, chose by the official 2024 panel of judges
2. Popular Prize obtained from the weighted sum of votes of the audience
3. Artemisia Prize
4. Ennesimo Best Performance Award
1. ENNESIMO FILM FESTIVAL 2024 OFFICIAL PANEL OF JUDGES
NORA LAKOS
Nora is the Artistic Director of Cinemira Teen International Film Festival in Budapest, the only film festival in Hungary which mainly addresses teenagers. She founded the Children’s Film Academy where teens aged 8 to 18 can learn to take their first steps in the film industry. The project combines activities aligned with her desire to create a highly specialised cultural and cinephile space for teens and children in Hungary.
GIAMMARIA TAMMARO
He is a freelance journalist who writes mainly about entertainment and culture and collaborates with some of Italy’s leading newspapers. He was the artistic director of the CartooNa section at COMICON and editorial consultant for Lucca Comics and Games. He has edited several original podcasts for Lucky Red, Circuito Cinema and MUBI. On Fanpage he runs the column Controcampo, which is dedicated to Italian producers; on Best Movie, instead, her runs a column called Dentro le nuvole which focuses on comics; on Cinecittà News he conceived Una vita da protagonista, a virtual in-depth space in which he discusses TV series.
THE THIRD JUROR
For the Ennesimo Film Festival, giving space to young people is not just a slogan to be flaunted, but a mantra. Driven by this intention, we decided already last year to expand the jury, which assigns the festival’s most important prize, to the Third Juror: a collective made up of students from 13 to 18 years old who decide to test and confront themselves with people working in cinema. Alongside Nora Lakos and Giammaria Tammaro there will be Gabriele, Massimo, Francesca, Francesco, Giovanni, Aura, Diego, Agata, Susanna, Afi Marta, Thomas, Veronica, Viola, Marta, Loredana, Sofia and Tommaso. After having followed a training course in film criticism and analysis, specially designed for them by the Academy’s trainers, they will be ready to enforce their opinions and cast the vote of the Third Juror to assign the kermesse’s most prestigious prize.
2. ENNESIMO PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Heterogeneous, passionate, enthusiastic. Yet every year the Ennesimo audience is faced with a very difficult choice: to choose a single short film to be awarded a prize. We will give all viewers present in the auditorium on Friday and Saturday evenings a voting card useful to cast their vote and to contribute to awarding the ninth Ennesimo Popular Prize statuette.
3. ARTEMISIA PRIZE
Some synergies just don’t end! Indeed, this year we confirm again the collaboration with the Circolo Culturale Artemisia, which awards the Artemisia Prize for EFF. Which short film has the most emphasised female role? Which modern Artemisia will be able to challenge social conventions and leave an impactful message? We’ll give the floor to the girls of the Circolo Artemisia…
4. ENNESIMO BEST PERFORMANCE AWARD
What would a movie be without the actors? The Ennesimo Best Performance award celebrates those who put their faces to the service of the stories of the short films competing in Ennesimo Film Festival’s Official Selection. This award is genderless, as we firmly believe that talent is universal and Cinema is one of the tools in which it finds its highest expression. This year, Ennesimo Best Performance will be awarded by Ruth Early, who has worked in the film industry for about 15 years and supervised the casting for some popular TV series such as, among others, Games of Thrones and The Crown.
Ruth Early
Ruth has worked for several production companies, including Universal Pictures and Warner Bros, with whom she has participated in the casting of many films, such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Wonder Woman, and Justice League. Among her outstanding work for TV series we can find The Crown and Peaky Blinders with Cillian Murphy. However, her favourite part of her casting career does not involve movies from big productions, but more independent ones, such as The Dutch Girl. In 2018 Ruth suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury, but she has continued to work in the film industry, now focusing mainly on writing screenplays. Ruth is currently working on a film in the U.S., where she will soon move to complete an advanced postgraduate program at UCLA: a course for only 8 people from around the world.
YOUTH SELECTION
The Academy Students Jury assign 2 official prize of the Festival
1. Young Prize
2. Ennesimo Comix Award
Non è l’Ennesima Giornata di Scuola was the first school course of what, years later, we renamed the Ennesimo Academy. Non è l’Ennesima Giornata di Scuola (It’s not the umpteenth school day), a long name focusing on several objectives. Firstly, to make memorable what could have seemed a simple school trip; secondly, to take up the concept from which the Festival was born: not a special event, but another Festival. Yet over the years, it has become an important event, eagerly awaited by the school community and meticulously prepared. What do the students pick up in just 6 hours? Ennesimo Academy educators enter the classroom and for 6 intense hours incite the students to reflect, challenge them with increasingly complex games and activities to achieve one goal: to stimulate their critical thinking. The analytical and thoughtful viewing of an audiovisual product deeply stimulates the Ennesimo Academy students. Year after year, this is proved by teachers’ interviews who report the involvement and enthusiasm during the activities from students who normally stay in the background. Thanks to this, they also begin to express their opinions. So we give them room in this edition: to the classes who are the protagonists of the project designed for the third classes of secondary schools. After having watched the short films of the Youth Selection during the morning screenings dedicated to them, they also will be able to express their judgement through the voting card mechanism to award no less than 2 prizes of our Festival: the Youth Prize and the Ennesimo Comix Award. As usual, also the students will have the opportunity to take part in a competition, writing a critical text of one of the 6 films in the Youth Selection. After adopting one of the films and expressing their evaluation using the tools they learned in class with the Academy’s educators, the best entries will be awarded at the Festival’s closing ceremony.
AFFARI DI FAMGILIA – PREMIO CITTÀ DI FIORANO
20 thousand families in the District received a postcard with the instructions to access a private section of ennesimofilmfestival.com, in order to enjoy the films in the selection and vote for their favourite. 20 thousand households took part in choosing the best short film about family. This award has always proposed many visions of the family over the years and was deeply wanted by Ennesimo FF to consolidate its relationship with the community. If for anthropology the family is a fundamental institution in every human society, it is evident that its development has undergone many changes in meaning. But how are they portrayed by contemporary cinema? This year’s selection offers us food for thought: from the difficulties caused by migratory flows to mental and physical health issues, from the dystopian possibilities offered by the internet to the parent-child relationship, and beyond. A journey through contemporary families and the complexities we face every day in the constant search for a happy ending!
FUORIFUOCO
Is it possible to contain a collective ritual such as a soccer match within a medium whose point of view is inevitably individual – be it the director’s, the spectator’s or the camera’s? What if soccer is just a pretext for telling something deeper and more topical? This is the challenge of Fuorifuoco, the selection of the Ennesimo Film Festival organized in collaboration with local sports clubs, where soccer is the narrative stratagem to address a wide range of issues, ranging from inclusion to corruption, from prejudice to sexuality. The very young representatives of the A.C. Fiorano, G.S. Libertas Fiorano, S.C. Ubersetto, ASD Junior Fiorano, GS Spezzanese and Generazione S from Sassuolo Calcio teams will be tasked with choosing the best football-themed film of the evening dedicated as much to cinema as it is to soccer.
SINOPHONIES: FILMS IN CHINESE
In light of China’s increasing relevance in our daily lives, for the 9th edition of the festival, Sinophonies: films in Chinese wants to contribute to deconstructing the common and often prejudiced image of what denotes Chineseness as a monolithic and monolingual entity. To do so, the short films of this selection are all made by sinophone directors (which means they are Chinese speakers), even if not all of them were born or resident in mainland China. Peripheries and margins, geographic as much as linguistic; territories and cultural formations that rethink their relationship with modern and old China (such as Taiwan and Hong Kong); experiences of migration abroad. Such topics are the main terrains on which Sinophonies moves.
PLAY PRIZE
In the contemporary landscape, games – from video games to role-playing and board games – are emerging as influential media and are also taking on a narrative role in cinema. From Jumanji, starring Robin Williams, where a board game becomes the centerpiece of the narrative, to films inspired by video game icons such as Tomb Raider, Super Mario and Resident Evil, to films set in casinos – gaming has been variously represented on the big screen, creating an interactive dialogue between the two realities of gaming and film. Ennesimo Film Festival’s new thematic selection, made in collaboration with PLAY, Modena’s games festival, investigates precisely this symbiotic relationship. Through a series of films, the selection explores the theme of gaming culture, analyzing the processes of hybridization and contamination that occur between the language of cinema and the universe of gaming. The selections present an opportunity to reflect on how gaming, between fiction and reality, has become a magnifying glass to explore contemporary society and its dynamics. The Play Prize is organized in collaboration with PLAY, the Modena Games Festival. The winner will be announced during the play convention, on 18 May, in Modena. The Play Prize will be decided by a panel of judges composed by: Francesca Baerald, artist and cartographer, Andrea Ligabue Play – Festival del Gioco art director and Luca Busani senior game player. Also the audience will expresses its preference and will assign the Play Audience Mention.