San Benedetto Film Fest (9)

Festival start: 21 July 2025      Festival end: 26 July 2025

SAN BENEDETTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ( Terms, Rules, prizes and motivations can be translated in 22 languages visiting our site https://www.sanbenedettofilmfest.it)

"MAGICSCREENPLAY" ( Terms, Rules, prizes and motivations can be translated in 22 languages visiting our site https://www.sanbenedettofilmfest.it/magic-screenplay/)


We built a festival in total freedom, without any external conditioning. An International Short Film Competition. A window on cinema from a privileged viewpoint: the city of San Benedetto del Tronto. Born in 2017, the SBFF has become one of the leading international events for the Adriatic Riviera and the Piceno region. The events will take place at the Palazzina Azzurra in San Benedetto del Tronto (AP) on Viale Buozzi 14.

"MAGICSCREENPLAY" - (Collateral Event to the SAN BENEDETTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL) was born from the need to combine the scenic, architectural and natural beauties of the Marche Region in syncrasia with the cultural, social heritage and identity need of the places and the human and professional resources that come from them, evolve and hope for an ever-increasing expansion of training, skills and abilities.

The Contest was born within a strategy of discovery and promotion of national and international emerging talents and represents the exclusive context to select, through a Quality Jury, the best pitch, with a predefined theme, to be declined into a consequent script.

After the selection, the one deemed to perform best will be subjected to development through the creation of a short film with a total length of no more than 15 minutes, produced by the Associated Professionals Association of Art & Management "IL SERPENTE AUREO," in collaboration with and with the support of the FILM COMMISSION MARCHE, the MARCHE REGION and under the patronage of the City of San Benedetto del Tronto.

ARTIST'S VISIONS - VISIONS FROM THE WORLD

- " There is no art form like cinema to strike the conscience, shake the emotions and reach the secret rooms of the soul" Ingmar Bergman

- " Life in the depths is completely different from life on the surface and has mysterious and terrifying aspects" Dario Argento

- " I am not an artist but a craftsman" "The heart must mediate between the brain and the hands" Fritz Lang

- " I steal from every single film ever made. If I like things I mix them together. And if people don't like it, then don't go see it.... I steal from everything.... Great artists steal not make homages" Quentin Tarantino

- " No matter where the world goes, even if I can't speak a foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. "Akira Kurosawa

- " An essential element of all art is risk..." Francis Ford Coppola

- " Cinema is a mode of expression that allows one to express all the nuances of a thing and its opposites..." Catherine Breillat

- " Unlike all other art forms, cinema is able to capture and render the passage of time, to stop it almost to possess it in infinity. I would say that film is the sculpture of time. "Andrei Tarkovsky

- " I am just a storyteller and film seems to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in motion, enhances it ... it is my way of telling a story. "Federico Fellini

- " The art of film can only really exist through a highly organized betrayal of reality" François Truffaut

- " I work with my dreams or nightmares" David Cronenberg

- " If I can't get the characters to talk, then I give up " Quantin Tarantino

- " The poet stretches out his hand to lead us beyond the last horizon, beyond the top of the pyramid, to that land that extends beyond the true and the false, beyond life and death, beyond space and time, beyond reason and fantasy, beyond spirit and matter." Alejandro Jodorowsky

- " Cinema is the 'only art form in which the works move and the viewer remains motionless " Ennio Flaiano

- " Cinema is a cultural industry. Making films also means assuming a social and moral responsibility. Therefore, we should not produce what we can sell, but sell what we want to produce " Franco Cristaldi

- " I think that scandalizing is a right.... " Pier Paolo Pasolini

- " To act is to listen... " Pupi Avati

- " I think the past affects the ability to tell stories" Joel Coen

- " Cinema is beautiful if it can read reality " Ettore Scola

- " Cinema consists of two things: a screen and chairs. The secret lies in filling them both " Roberto Benigni

Cash Prizes: 1,000$

- BEST SHORT FILM ( Prize € 1000)
- BEST DIRECTING
- BEST PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR
- BEST SCREENPLAY
- BEST ACTOR
- BEST ACTRESS
- BEST ANIMATION
- BEST CASTING
- BEST EDITING
- "SYBILA" AWARD
- "DECIMA MUSA" AWARD
- SPECIAL AWARD OF THE POPULAR SHORT FILM JURY
- CAREER AWARD
- MEMORIAL AWARD.

______________________________________________________

MAGICSCREENPLAY

After a careful evaluation and selection phase of the works received, a finalist will be identified who must, within the timeframe stipulated by the aforementioned call for entries, produce the screenplay for the work submitted to the contest. After the procedure listed above, the Pre-Production phase of the work will begin.

9th Edition – Year 2025

Best Short Film Award

Prize of 1000 Euros

The San Benedetto International Film Festival is accessible to deaf people, so please submit products subtitled in Italian. If available, accessible subtitles are even more appreciated. Thank you.

1. Aims

The mission, to which the new board of the "San Benedetto Film Festival" has adhered, is to enhance and implement the Festival, characterizing the event with highly qualitative and transversal prerogatives, with the ambitious spirit of promoting the knowledge and dissemination of cinema, at an international level, in all its art forms, with a spirit of cooperation and dialogue, so that it can be a vehicle for knowledge, integration, and reflection of anthropic and cultural codes, by virtue of its multiple forms.  

This new approach will be focused on the philosophy of the search for a global consciousness capable of addressing the complexity of modern society to welcome, encourage, and support, like the seaside city from which it originates, new entities, paths, and communicative languages from all over the world, with particular attention to the cinematographic poetics of disadvantaged countries and to give voice to the numerous cultural microcosms that otherwise would not have the possibility of expression, with a strong socio-cultural connotation.  

The "San Benedetto Film Fest" aims to be a vehicle for the cultural dissemination of non-hegemonic values but catalysts of a pluralistic and inclusive thought of identities and prospective autonomies, a privileged channel of communication and social interaction, support for the collective, historical, and anthropological memory of the territories, and a magnifying glass to tell the story of today's society, its spaces, internal conflicts, and the magma of energies and vitality that are generated in it.

2. Period of Execution

The sixth edition of the San Benedetto International Film Festival will take place from July 21st to 26th, 2025.

3. Contest and Sections

DYSTOPIAN FEATURE FILM: Feature Film Competition. Minimum duration of 50 minutes. Dystopian theme.
SAN BENEDETTO IN CORTO: International Short Film Competition with a maximum duration of 30 minutes. All cinematographic genres and all themes are allowed.
SPECIAL SECTIONS (Thematic areas for short films)

JUNIOR: Audiovisual products intended for a children's audience, for content and type of language.
YOUNG ADULT: Audiovisual products intended for a young audience or an adolescent audience (12-18 years) with content and languages typical of this literary and cinematographic genre.
BRANDED CONTENT: Audiovisual products aimed at conveying and consolidating the values connected to an existing Brand, but without explicit advertising messages, open to different narrative formats. Published products must not violate patents or trademarks, or misuse them. In this regard, read the Film Freeway regulation at point 8.1.
WEB SERIES: A series of fiction products (composed of at least 3 episodes) created to be enjoyed through the web or on the displays of mobile devices. The episodes of the web series must be held together by the same title and/or trademark (if present). It must be characterized by a background narrative that tells the stories of fixed characters or in any case by a common theme. The episodes must be web native and transmitted on the internet. Works such as previews, trailers, size reels, teasers, demo reels, commercials, sequences of feature films for theatrical distribution or for home video release, episodes of TV series that have aired and distributed mainly by a free television channel, pay television, and all cable television, any unsold pilot episodes of TV series are not considered web series. By "episode" we mean a single fragment of a web series with a maximum length of 23 minutes.
MOCKUMENTARY: Audiovisual products (max 30 min) representing fictional events with documentary language. In this section, in addition to real mockumentaries, fake documentaries and found footage are accepted. Hybrid fiction works that have documentary grafts referring to fictional facts are allowed. Documentaries, docu-films, docu-fiction, or docu-drama are not allowed.
ANIMATED SHORTS: Any audiovisual product made with any animation technique.
POLITICALLY (in) CORRECT: Inclusivity is our mission. Giving voice to all the voices of the world, even to those who do not have one, even (and especially) to those independent productions that do not find a market or distributors. Often trends are followed and politically correct languages are adopted, and in most cases this translates into clichés and stereotypes. Art has always used provocation, the provocations of 20 or 30 years ago have become today's standard. Section for all those products that go off the rails of a pre-established morality; being irreverent does not mean fomenting hatred towards certain categories or being offensive to someone. Great film masterpieces have been opposed, but history has proved them right.
EROTIQUE: In an era in which sexuality is cleared through customs, the section intends to recover the meaning of Eros, or the psychological condition linked to passion, desire, healthy obsession which is nothing more than the most intriguing side of love, told through the game of seduction.
TI AMO DA …MORIRE (I LOVE YOU TO…DEATH): When a relationship becomes toxic, so much so that it leads to violence, physical or psychological. Often, there is a tendency to underestimate or ignore the possibility that a man may be a victim of violence by a woman, so in this section all those shorts that deal with the delicate topic of toxic relationships beyond any gender prejudice are welcome.
GIALLO (YELLOW): In addition to the classic giallo, subgenres are also allowed: Thriller, Noir, Hard Boiled, Pulp, Gangster, Yakutza, Spy Story, Police.
CINE-INVESTIGATION: (Legality, education, and good citizenship practices - remembering and rethinking community identity) intended as historical memory and message of significant artistic expressions where cinematographic culture is at the service of the microcosm of voices and identities surpassed by the globalization of information and by collective indifference that prevents a social and meditative rooting on the most pressing current events and on aspects of social life crumbled by the fluid becoming of liquid society.

4. Jury and awards

A commission of experts will meet to select the works that will be proposed. The secretariat will communicate the definitive participation in the Festival after the second selection phase by July 1, 2025.  

The awards are as follows:

Award for Best Short Film (€ 1000)
Best Animated Film Award
Best Director Award
Best Director of Photography Award
Best Screenplay Award
"Alfredo Amabili" Award for Best Actor
Best Actress Award
Sybila Award (Myths and Legends from all over the world)
Tenth Muse Award (Cinematographic Poetics)
Popular Jury Special Short Film Award
Career Award
Memory Award
Other special awards may be assigned at the discretion of the jury.

The products entered for the special sections compete for all the prizes. Works that best interpret the mood of the relative section will have the further possibility of winning a special section prize. These awards are in any case optional, and are assigned at the discretion of the Jury.

The prestigious "Best Foreign Film Award" (also known as "Best Foreign Short Film" or "Best Foreign Work"), is not included among the main awards, but remains optional and DOES NOT GIVE RIGHT to a cash prize, reserved exclusively for the Best Short Film, which can be assigned without distinction to an Italian or foreign product. The "Best Foreign Film Award" will not be awarded if a foreign production film wins the cash prize.

Certo, ecco la traduzione in inglese:

5. Selection

The selection of the finalist works, which will be presented during the event, is at the discretion and unquestionable judgment of the Festival Jury. The list of selected works will be published on the website www.sanbenedettofilmfest.it and reported in the catalog and in other means of communication and will take place in three phases:

SELECTION OF FILMS IN COMPETITION: The jury will draw up the list of selected works, which can boast the title of "Official Selection of the San Benedetto Film Fest 2025".
The selected films do not have automatic access to a public screening, but can continue to the next selection phase of the finalist films.

SELECTION OF FINALISTS: Each judge will separately view the films selected in the first phase and provide their own evaluation. The Jury will thus define the list of finalist films. These films, in addition to being able to boast the title of "Finalist of the San Benedetto Film Fest 2025", will be screened to the public during the festival days, according to a calendar that will be published and communicated to those directly involved by 01/07/2025. The finalist films access the next phase of election of the winner, in the categories of prizes defined in the previous article 4.
 
ELECTION OF WINNERS: At the end of the screening days, the Jury will communicate the winners in each category, during an awards ceremony at the conclusion of the festival. The films and any awarded actors, in addition to boasting the title of "Winner of the San Benedetto Film Fest 2025", will receive an award that will be presented during the final evening of the festival. The awards must be collected personally by the winner or, in case of impediments, by a person delegated to do so. The absence of the winner or their delegate at the awards ceremony releases the organization from any obligation towards the winner, who can still recover the award at their own expense.  
6. Rules of Participation

The competition is open to directors and production companies that submit short films, not necessarily first works.

a) For the competitive sections, works of any genre are admitted to participate in the "San Benedetto Film Fest". All films made before January 1, 2017, are excluded. The Direction reserves the right to admit to the competitive sections works that, due to theme, duration, or year of production, do not fall within the indicated criteria. The festival Direction may decide to establish competitive subsections dedicated to particular genres, themes, or authors. The presentation of world or international premiere works constitutes a preferential title for the purposes of selection.  

b) Registration is completed by uploading the work to the Festhome platform.

c) The authors of the works selected for the final phase will be asked to send as soon as possible (via wetransfer, dropbox, etc.) illustrative material relating to the film: (posters, trailers, photographs in digital formats .jpeg or .tiff at 300 dpi), of which publication is authorized and free, both for the catalog and for promotional purposes in the press. You will also be asked to send a copy of the film with the following characteristics: - resolution: 1920×1080 - encoding: H.264, AppleProRes or PhotoJPEG”. Countersigned regulation, copy of the front/back identity document, and completed and signed release letter.  

d) The list of works selected for the final phase will be published on the website www.sanbenedettofilmfest.it by July 20, 2025, and interested parties will receive confirmation via the registration platform and/or via e-mail. Unselected works will not receive further communications.

7. Timeline  

Competing works must be submitted no later than the following deadline: May 31, 2025.

8. Screenings

a) The schedule and screening times are the exclusive responsibility of the Direction of the "San Benedetto Film Fest".

b) The finalist audiovisual products will be screened in the original language; Authors of films in a language other than Italian are required to have a copy subtitled in Italian; Italian subtitles will have a preferential evaluation, certainly by the popular jury. For more information: E-mail: info@sanbenedettofilmfest.it

c) The Direction of the "San Benedetto Film Fest" will take care of the publication of a festival catalog and information material on the works presented.

9. General Rules

The Festival will take place at the Palazzina Azzurra location or another destination at the discretion of the Festival management.

a) Participation in the selections of the "San Benedetto Film Fest" involves a cost, as a reimbursement of expenses, of €15.00 per audiovisual work.

b) The application for admission to the "San Benedetto Film Fest" implies unconditional acceptance of these regulations. Selected films, whose availability has already been confirmed by the entitled parties, cannot be subsequently withdrawn from the Festival.

c) The Direction of the "San Benedetto Film Fest" can make decisions relating to issues not provided for in these regulations. For any disputes, the Court of Ascoli Piceno is competent, and the Italian version of these regulations will prevail.