THIRTY YEARS
“Buen camino,” is the salutation that pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago hear and voice hundreds of times. These two words are capable of making you cry with emotion, whether they are pronounced by strangers or by friends with whom you have been walking for weeks, at the beginning of the Camino or after having traveled seven hundred kilometres, with aching knees and blisters on your feet, after you have eaten, sung, and told stories the night before, in a hostel, with pilgrims from all over the world, hugging each other in tears in the Cathedral Square in Santiago de Compostela.
Many times in these thirty years we have pronounced and written a similar salutation — “buon cammino” — and today, when we repeat these words, they resonate more strongly than ever and we feel that they embrace, ideally, all those who have travelled, like pilgrims, the path of the Film Festival della Lessinia. And there is nothing more to say, like when you walk together and in silence, and discover that it is silence that brings you into communion more than any words.
We have chosen to dedicate this thirtieth edition to the “journey,” that of the Festival, of the more than 1,400 films we have presented since 1995, of which this year there are 97, coming from 48 countries around the world, and of the thousands of stories and encounters experienced and preserved in the collective memory of thousands and thousands of people: spectators, guests, and team members. Pilgrims know that once they have reached their destination the journey begins there, or rather it continues, starting precisely from that point.
With this awareness, the Film Festival della Lessinia sets off again with boots on its feet, a backpack on its shoulders, a stick in hand, and a gaze towards the horizon, carrying with it the words that, like a pilgrim, it heard said before leaving: “The Camino will give you not what you are looking for, but what you need.”
Alessandro Anderloni
Artistic director, Film Festival della Lessinia
