organised by Marco Dalla Gassa, Francesco D’Asero, Giulio Tosi e Federico Zecca
Trieste, 21 January 2025

The relationship between film critics and festivals is as old as the very idea of film events. Its roots go back to the 1930s, when the Italian press first reported on and reviewed the inaugural Venice International Film Festival in 1932. Since then, festivals have become a cornerstone of critical practice, shaping the annual work of correspondents for magazines, newspapers, online outlets, radio, and television.

Over time, festivals have increasingly woven criticism into their own fabric, carving out dedicated spaces and occasions for it: from press rooms to conferences and interviews, from dialogue sessions between filmmakers and reviewers to awards and sections created in collaboration with the specialised press (such as Cannes’ “Semaine de la critique” or Venice’s “Settimana Internazionale della Critica”), and even training initiatives like workshops for emerging critics.

Professional critics, for their part, responded with an extensive body of discourse—not only through daily reports and reviews of the films presented, but also by igniting debates on the very nature of festivals, their direction, structure, and organisation. The relationship between critics and festivals can be regarded as mutually advantageous: critics help promote festivals and shape their identity, while festivals, in turn, offer spaces for encounter and exchange, acting as crossroads of film culture where opinions circulate and collaborations take shape.

Moreover, festivals have marked key moments both in the broader history of film criticism—often through protests and debates sparked within the festival context—and in the individual careers of critics, who have refined their practice in these settings, served on juries, and contributed to festivals as consultants, selectors, or even as founders and directors of new events or parallel initiatives.