Catania Film Fest launches the Special Ukraine: cinema as a bridge between cultures

The Catania Film Fest, one of the strategic cultural realities included in the application dossier of Catania as Italian Capital of Culture 2028, is already looking to the future and strengthening its international vocation with a special project dedicated to Ukraine.

Starting from the next edition of the festival, scheduled for November 2026, the 15th Catania Film Fest will launch a “Special Ukraine”, an initiative designed to create a cultural bridge between Sicilian authors and directors and their Ukrainian counterparts through the universal language of cinema.

The project aims to promote artistic and human dialogue between two creative communities, offering a space for discussion, knowledge, and collaboration. Cinema thus becomes a tool for meeting that can transcend geographical and political boundaries, enhancing the stories, sensitivities, and visions of young authors and filmmakers.

Among the initiatives planned for the 2026 edition of the festival will be a showcase dedicated to Ukrainian animated short films, selected to tell the vitality and quality of the country's contemporary artistic production, along with a selection of films and documentaries made in co-production with Italy, as a testament to the existing cultural and production collaborations between the two countries. In addition to screenings, the festival will organize meetings, talks, and in-depth moments dedicated to Ukrainian authors, to analyze their cinematic language, the cultural context in which they operate, and the role of cinema as a testimony and tool for cultural dialogue.

A particularly significant experience for the many Catanese students who participate in the festival each year, who thus have the opportunity to engage directly with professionals from European and international cinema, transforming the festival into a space for training, dialogue, and cultural growth.

Every year, the Catania Film Fest also offers screenings and focuses dedicated to over fifteen European countries, providing the audience with the opportunity to discover films, documentaries, and short films that often struggle to find space in traditional distribution circuits. The festival is not only an opportunity to see international cinema but also a moment for direct encounters with authors: directors, screenwriters, and producers participate in debates and public meetings where they share the creative process, the challenges of production, and the stories behind their works.

"A film festival can play an important role in connecting cultures, creative communities, and new generations of authors," says Cateno Piazza, founder and artistic director of the Catania Film Fest. "Through cinema, relationships are built, stories are shared, and a space for dialogue is created that often manages to go beyond political and linguistic barriers. With this Special Ukraine, we want to offer a concrete signal of openness and collaboration between Sicilian and Ukrainian filmmakers, while also keeping our commitment to young people and the audience that participates in the festival every year at the center. The Special Ukraine also represents a symbolic signal of hope: the hope of the Catania Film Fest is that, by 2028, dialogue between cultures can accompany a new time of peace."

In this journey towards Catania's candidacy as Italian Capital of Culture 2028, the festival aims to strengthen its role as a global platform capable of connecting territories, artists, and communities through cinema, contributing to the construction of an open, supportive, and future-oriented cultural network.

The Catania Film Fest thus reaffirms its mission: to make cinema a space for meeting between peoples, stories, and imaginaries, with the belief that culture can be one of the strongest bridges towards mutual understanding and peace.