The new “Club Orizzonti”

The “Club Orizzonti” will be created to accompany the Venice International Film Festival’s most innovative section, a veritable documentary array of contemporary cinema in all it’s forms of expression.

Orizzonti has been renewed and restructured, so that a wider spectrum of filmmakers can interact with the rest of the program. It was important for the Venice International Film Festival to offer a very special space to an area of film which, now more than ever, offers a lively take on all the arts, on all expressive languages.

And this experiment could only be accompanied by new features in the organization: for the film delegations and their principal contacts, the new “Club Orizzonti” will be fitted out on the first floor of the Palazzo del Casinò (Venice Lido).  

This will be a space for meetings and discussions, complete with an eating and relaxation area, which is being offered to all the filmmakers, producers and artistic collaborators of the films selected for the Orizzonti Competition. Here they will be able to meet the journalists and critics, market professionals and accredited university students at the 67th Venice International Film Festival who are interested in the works presented in this program section.

The “Club Orizzonti” will be open to all accredited visitors to the 67th Venice Film Festival following each screening of the Orizzonti films, which will begin at 11.30 AM, 2:30 PM and 5:15 PM in the adjacent Sala Perla (also located on the first floor of the Palazzo del Casinò). Each screening will in fact be followed by a meeting (scheduled for 1:00 PM, 4:30 PM and 7:00 PM) with the delegations of the Orizzonti film shown at those times.

The Orizzonti section is competitive. The international Orizzonti Jury will be chaired by Shirin Neshat (Iran, director, president). The other jury members are Raja Amari (Tunisia, director), Lav Diaz (Philippines, director), Alexander Horwath (Austria, critic), Pietro Marcello (Italy, director).

The Jury will attribute the Orizzonti Award (reserved for feature-length films); the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize (reserved for feature-length films); the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film; the Orizzonti Award for Best Medium-Length Film.