The twentieth edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival, the most relevant Italian event showcasing science fiction and fantasy movies, organized and promoted by the Film and audio-visual research and experimentation Centre La Cappella Underground – will take place from October 29th to November 3rd, 2020.
Submissions to the festival’s competition sections are officially open, the deadline being August 15th, 2020. Guidelines and instructions for submission to the 2020 edition are available on the festival’s website, and films shall be registered to the FilmFreeWay platform at https://filmfreeway.com/TriesteScienceFictionFestival.
The Trieste Science+Fiction Festival comprises the following sections:
- Asteroide award, competition for the best international science-fiction and fantasy film;
- Méliès d’argent, competition for best European fantastic genre feature film;
- Méliès d’argent, competition for best European fantastic genre short film;
- Spazio Italia, selection of the best Italian fantastic genre movie productions;
- Retrospectives, special programs and lifetime achievement awards;
- Movie premiéres and special events.
Founded in Trieste in 2000, the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival picked up the legacy of the historic Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza di Trieste, the first genre film festival in Italy and among the first in Europe, which took place from 1963 to 1982, soon becoming the most important science-fiction and fantastic genre event in Italy. Cinema, television, new media, literature, comic books, music, visual and performative arts are all part of the “meraviglie del possibile” (the wonders of possible worlds, as the title of a seminal Italian science-fiction stories collection would have it).
Among the many international guests of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival past editions are Neil Gaiman, Pupi Avati, Dario Argento, Jimmy Sangster, John Landis, Lamberto Bava, Terry Gilliam, Enki Bilal, Joe Dante, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Ray Harryhausen, Christopher Lee, Roger Corman, George Romero, Alfredo Castelli, Gabriele Salvatores, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bruce Sterling, Rutger Hauer, Sergio Martino, Douglas Trumbull, Phil Tippett and Brian Yuzna.
Trieste Science+Fiction Festival is a board member of the Méliès International Festivals Federation is also a member of AFIC – Italian Film Festivals Association and of the proESOF project. It has been identified by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Autonomous Regional authority as one of the region’s three-year film projects of international relevance. The festival is supported by the most important local scientific institutes and is a member of the proESOF project towards ESOF2020 – Euroscience Open Forum Trieste.
The main venue of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival, thanks to the collaboration of the Trieste Municipality and the Friuli Venezia-Giulia resident Theatre, is the Politeama Rossetti. The Festival’s headquarters will be in the Casa del Cinema building, where all the most important Trieste cultural associations are located: here, as well as in the Miela Theatre, the non-competitive sections and events of the festival, while other special programs and activities will take place at the Ariston Cinema.
