ROME - After a year of streaming and anxiety, live cinema is returning with the launch of a new film festival in Porto Turistico in Rome, Cinelido.

  Cinelido - Festival of Italian Cinema, will take place from July 16-18. It will be dedicated to the promotion and appreciation of short film and emerging Italian talents, with a particular homage paid to its evocative location, Rome’s Porto Turistico. It will be hosted in the port’s 800-seat open-air amphitheatre.

  Cinelido was founded by the director Giulio Mastromauro, CEO of communications agency Gruppo Matches, Andrea Cicini, and Alberto Di Angelis of Hundred Dreams Production, and organised by Zen Movie, one of the most important European companies in the world of short film.

  Every year, one section of the festival will focus on a different city on the shores of the Mediterranean, with this year’s edition planned for Tirana, Albania’s capital. It will also inaugurate a partnership with the Tirana International Film Festival.

  The festival will also present several winners of Italy’s prestigious David Di Donatello awards.

  The entrants for the festival’s competition will be picked by the directors Ali Asgari and Farnoosh Samad, and judged by a jury made up of 15 students from Municipio X High School and 15 adults.

  Giulio Mastromauro said in a statement, “Cinelido wants to represent the moment of reopening for the whole of Italian cinema, and for young national directors who have not been able to enjoy their deserved live showcases in the many festivals which have had to be suspended due to Covid. We wanted to pair ‘Cinelido’ with ‘Italian Film Festival’, convinced of the need, now more than ever, to contribute to the restart of an entire movement, that of emerging short films, represented by those authors who, in the coming years, will turn to feature length films intended for cinemas.”