Italy's Giffoni Fest Plants Flag in Brazil With New Children's Event

ROME – Italy’s Giffoni Film Festival on Thursday released the details of its first Brazilian edition, which gets underway Monday with the screening of 21 films in addition to workshops, concerts and other events.

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The 43-year-old Giffoni event, which says it is the largest film festival in the world that focuses entirely on children’s films, usually takes place in the picturesque village of Giffoni Valle Piana, around 50 miles inland from the Italian port city of Naples. But now the organizers are taking an abbreviated version of the event to Brazil, where the Giffoni Film Festival-Sao Paulo will run through Friday, Feb. 1.

Giffoni officials say the new festival will become an annual event.

Organizers said the program will include 16 in-competition films from 11 countries -- all but two of them from the last two editions of the original Giffoni Fest: Kaddish For A Friend from Russia’s Leo Khasin; South African film Spud from Donovan Marsh; Stay! from Lourens Blok; Il sole dentro (The Sun Inside) from Italian director Paolo Bianchini; Dennis Bots’ Cool Kids Don't Cry; Frisson Des Collines from Richard Roy of Canada; Victor And The Secret Of The Crocodile Mansion from Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert; Norman, directed by Jonathan Segal; Sara Blecher’s Otelo Burning; Hunky Dory from the U.K.’s Marc Evans; King Of Devil's Island from Marius Holst; Simple Simon from Andrea Ohman; Richard Ayoade’s Submarine; and Suicide Room from Jan Komasa.

The two in-competition films that have not screened at the Italian Giffoni previously are both from Brazil: Selton Mello’s O Palhaco (Clown), which tells the story of a clown in search of his true identity, and Xingu, which tells the tale of the brothers behind the Xingu Indigenous Park, directed by Cao Hamburger. O Palhaco was Brazil's official candidate for the Oscar for best foreign language film.

“Our goal is to make the Giffoni Film Festival-Sao Paulo a reference point for children and young people across Latin America,” Claudio Gubitosi, Giffoni’s artistic director, said.

The five-day event will take place in Sao Paulo’s Memorial da America Latina facility.