Begining of 12th Giffoni Macedonia Youth FIlm Festival

More than 450 participants from eight countries will be part of the 12th edition of the "Giffoni Macedonia" Youth Film Festival in Skopje. At the well-known locations for the Giffoners, the Youth Cultural Center, the Cinematheque of Macedonia and the "Millennium" cinema until October 8, they will enjoy the magic of movies, discussions, createing art, and participating in creative workshops.

The festival was open on October 3 at 19:00 at the Millennium cinema, with a screening of the Italian film "The Last Time We Were Children" directed by famous

Italian actor Claudio Bizio. Admission is free and the event is open to the general public.

Fifteen feature films in the official competition and 40 short and animated films are divided into three competition categories according to the age of the participants, i.e. juniors (6th to 9th grade), cadets (I and II secondary schools) and seniors (III and IV secondary schools). Аs always at the festival, the Italian films program is the most represented with 3 feature films and 9 short films.

The participants will be able to meet and participate in discussions with the director of the film "Sweet Sorrow", Kosta Djordjevic, who also participated in the festival a few years ago with his first film. The director Greta Thornton from Ireland will be a guest with her own short film, and Macedonian director Vardan Tozia, whose film "M" will be screened in the official program of the festival, will be among the guests. The "Giffoni Macedonia" festival always tries to show the best selection of films for the young audience and as many films as possible for young people from the region, so this year, in addition to most European films, we have feature films from Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, and the short films are from all over the world.

Workshops are an inevitable part of the program at the 12th edition of the festival as well. This year, eight creative workshops will be held with the support of the British Council through the Edu Cuts project, RYCO (Regional Youth Cooperation Office) through the Creative YEES project and the Institute of Communication Studies through the "YouThink" project. The mentors of the workshops are established directors, artists, musicians who, during five days, will work with the young

participants on developing their creativity and imagination.

Every day during the festival, in the afternoon, there will be two Edu Cuts Talks within the framework of the conference on the topic "Fostering Youth creativity", which will be attended by young successful people who will share their experiences and visions. Experiences will be shared from the five workshops that took place within the festival partners of this project in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo in the past few months.

Youth film production is the main thread of this conference, so various youth initiatives and workshops for filmmaking by young talents will be presented here, such as "DocuSprouts" at the "Makedox" festival, the “Teen Doc” workshop at the "Interaction" festival from Serbia, the new the young filmmakers group "Aspirin

Production", the young director Greta Thornton from Ireland, the Macedonian YouTuber, creator and musician Ivan Einstein and others.

The Edu Cuts network connects film festivals and organizations focused on the promotion and implementation of education and mobility of young talents. The network is part of the "Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans" project, a project supported by the European Union, whose goal is to strengthen the dialogue in the Western Balkans, encouraging the cultural and creative sectors for increased socio-economic impact.

The European film education program CinEd will be presented at the conference, which includes 16 partners from various countries, and we are ready to join them.

The festival will be closed on October 8 in the "Millennium" cinema when the winning films in all competition categories will be announced, but the most important thing for the participants is that all the films will be shown and all the photos, storyboards and drawings made by the participants during the festival will be exhibited.

And this year again, in cooperation with "Pacomak", we will motivate young people to be as eco-aware as possible. Together, we came up with an interesting challenge for the participants of "Jifoni" in caring for a cleaner environment, young people will dispose of plastic bottles in the vending machines of "Pacomak" and through the ECOMAK application they will collect points. All the collected points of the participants of the festival will be doubled, and the regular participant of the festival who collects the most points will receive a trip to the festival "Giffoni" in Italy as a reward.

The festival "Giffoni Macedonia" is supported by: Gifoni Experience, Film Agency, Ministry of Culture of Italy and the Italian Embassy in Skopje, British Council through the project Culture and creativity for Western Balkans, Youth Cultural Fund through RYCO, Pacomak, Vitaminka and others.