June event to be known as the Italian Global Series Festival with critic Marco Spagnoli steering
The Roma Fiction Festival is to be relaunched almost a decade after its demise as the Italian Global Series Festival (IGSF).
Set to take place in Riccione and Rimini in June, the IGSF is organised by Italian producer group the Associazione Produttori Audiovisivi (APA), in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE), with critic Marco Spagnoli attached as the event’s artistic director.
It has been described as an “updated incarnation” of the Roma Fiction Festival, which ran annually for ten years from 2007-2016.
The first edition of IGSF will take place 21-28 June 2025 at the Pala Riccione and Multiplex Cine Palace in Riccione, and at Rimini’s Cinema Fulgor, Teatro Galli and Corte degli Agostiniani.
Organisers said the main objective of the festival is “to promote and celebrate the production of Italian and International series, their artistic quality and capacity to entertain.”
Schedule & screenings
The festival will offer a competition strand, alongside first-look screenings, keynotes and master classes with Italian and international talent.
It aims to become “a laboratory for ideas around the future of the sector,” organisers said, with ambitions to highlight innovative and influential productions from across the world.
Italian and international series will be screened across four competitive sections at IGSF: drama series, comedy, limited series, and TV movies.
Titles will be eligible for prizes including best series, best leading actor and actress, best creator and/or director, voted for via a jury of industry professionals that includes Bille August (The Count of Monte Cristo), director and screenwriter Cristina Comencini (Don’t Tell) and director/writer Paolo Genovese (Perfect Strangers).
A special Italian Fiction prize will also be awarded to a title of Italian origin distributed in Italy between 1 June, 2024 and 31 May, 2025. The National Union of Film Journalists will also award a Special Nastro D’argento to a major international co-production present at the festival.
The festival’s Maximo Excellence Awards will also honour key talents during the event, with the first recipients revealed as Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh; Elena Sofia Ricci, who was behind the Roma Fiction Fest in 2007; actor/director Carlo Verdone; music producer Giorgio Moroder; and Lost actress Evangeline Lilly.
“I am grateful to the Ministry of Culture (MiC) and the Audiovisual Producers Association (APA) for the honour of being able to return to work, this time in person, on the ‘reincarnation’ of the Roma Fiction Fest,” said Spagnoli.
He added that the event aims “to promote Italian production in a very diversified international context” while also recognising local talent and supporting the next generation in front and behind the camera.
“IGSF aims to soon become a point of reference and a meeting place for the national and international industry, in the name of the stories, talent and audiovisual productions that have always represented Italian excellence,” Spagnoli said.
Further details about the festival’s program and attending guests are expected to be announced in the coming weeks, with the full schedule release in early May.
Italy is already home to a number of film and TV focused events, including the internationally facing Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo (MIA), which is into its 11th edition. It takes place this year in Rome from 6-10 October.
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