The red carpet of
the Giffoni Children's Film Festival has hosted plenty of A-list
celebrities.
These include the likes Robert De Niro, Oliver Stone, Meryl
Streep, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, John Travolta, Wim
Wenders, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, Krzystof Kieslowsky, Roman
Polanski, Emir Kusturica, Jon Voight, Susan Sarandon, Edward
Norton, Nicolas Cage, Mira Sorvino, Naomi Watts, Winona Ryder,
Danny de Vito, Sergio Leone, Sacha Baron Cohen, Giancarlo
Giannini, and Ugo Tognazzi, just to name a few.
Starting on Friday and running through July 27, the
Giffoni Film Festival brings children's films to the centre
stage.
The small town of Giffoni Valle Piana, 40 kilometers from
Salerno, whose name is now synonymous with filmmaking, will host
the festival's 44th edition, and this year another great
Hollywood star, Richard Gere, will be making an appearance as a
guest.
Over the years, the number of children serving as jurors
has grown to reach 3,500; other guests were announced on social
media. The "meet & greet" tickets, where the public meets the
stars, sold out in record time of under eight minutes. Many of
the guests were invited based on recommendations that came from
among the film festival's 33,700 Twitter followers and 103,000
Facebook fans, making the film festival's page the most
interactive in the world.
The most eagerly awaited guests are Alan Rickman, who plays
Headmaster of Hogwarts Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series;
Lea Michele who plays the talented Rachel Berry in the popular
TV series Glee; Matt Bomer, star of White Collar; Dylan O'Brien,
star of TV series Teen Wolf and film The Maze Runner; Ryan
Guzman, star of Step Up All In, which will have its Italian
premier at the festival; and Micaela Riera, taking the reigns
from Violetta on the Disney Channel in Cata e i misteri della
sfera, an Italian-dubbed version of the Spanish-language
Argentinian series Senales del fin del mundo.
The turning point for the children's film festival came
when Francois Truffaut, who visited this small town in Campania
in 1982, wrote in an open letter: "Of all the film festivals,
Giffoni is the most necessary."
Children from 50 different countries across all seven
continents turn the Giffoni Film Festival into an extraordinary
life experience and friendship-building experience for the young
jurors.
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