Forty years of Settimana Internazionale della Critica; ten years of SIC@SIC.
A double anniversary that is not laden with nostalgia — on the contrary, it renews our commitment to the present and the future of cinema and the world.
It is inevitable, after reaching such a milestone, to give in to the temptation of looking backwards and to question the results achieved, the path trodden, the changes undergone over the years — if we have changed at all. “Artistic research and ideological debate,” declared Giorgio Tinazzi, the SIC’s first General Delegate, setting the course for decades to come. What to him were founding principles became the benchmark for all the commissions that helmed the Settimana over the years: the search for a new cinema capable of acting as a cultural stimulus within the framework of the Venice Film Festival. Independently, but always engaging in a relationship of dialectic collaboration with the Biennale, with complete mutual respect.

In that sense, nothing has changed. The core of the mission has remained intact: if anything, we have continued to adapt to the times, to an increasingly demanding festival system, and to an ever-changing, unpredictable world, which we observe through the lens of films, with cinema at its centre. But also weaving threads, fostering connections, stimulating reflection that through the images can be translated into thought.
This exercise happens inside a similarly changed ecosystem, hyper-competitive and often conditioned by the logic of business, where one can only exist by striking a balance (which does not mean compromise) between artistic rigor and the demands of the market. Yet, even in this scenario, the SIC has never lost its way; nor has it exhausted its obsession with pondering the present, stubbornly seeking to capture its essence in spite of its elusive nature.

At SIC, the taste for discovery resides in the realm of debut films. Our programming work is based on the essential axiom that the act of choosing — the evaluation and selection of projects — is an act of responsibility. Only time will tell whether our most recent bets will bear fruit (though, if the history of SIC@SIC is anything to go by, they will); what truly matters is the consistency of thought, the hunger for novelty, and an anarchic spirit as a source of constant stimulus.
The films that make up the current edition (9+9 titles, selected amidst the nearly 700 feature films that were submitted from all over the world, and the nearly 300 Italian shorts applications) draw from and amplify the tensions of our times. They cross borders of identity, geographical frontiers, existential boundaries: spaces where the image becomes an instrument of both analysis and interpretation. Stark contrasts, changing bodies, screens, reflected images, mobile lines. Boundaries begging to be crossed. The cinema of today shouts out loud, unsettles, repossesses. It is inhabited by rebels for a just cause who reclaim spaces of empowerment and rebirth. A new selection committee (appointed by the Sindacato Nazionale Critici Cinematografici Italiani and composed of Matteo Berardini, Marianna Cappi, Francesco Grieco, and Marco Romagna) has been at my side in the definition of a varied, solid programme, both welcoming and daring, that strives to capture the moment before it vanishes, suspended in the open and indefinite time of a present continuous.

Beatrice Fiorentino
Artistic Director Settimana Internazionale della Critica