Toribio Domenico has directed Inte Cinema Festival since it began, in a single Roman screening room, in 2018. Nine editions on, the festival has shown work from dozens of countries and given away a good number of trophies — but its founder is most animated when talking about what the festival has refused to become. We spoke with him as submissions for the ninth edition opened.
Nine editions. Did you imagine it would last this long?
No, honestly. The first year we had twelve films and six countries, and I remember thinking that if we did it once and did it well, that would be enough. But the filmmakers kept coming back — not the same ones, though some of them, but the idea kept finding new people. A festival is a habit a city develops. Rome developed the habit.
The festival has stayed small on purpose. Why?
Because the thing we are protecting only exists at a certain scale. When you programme forty short films instead of four hundred, you can watch each one properly, you can put them in an order that means something, and the audience can actually hold the whole evening in their heads. Growth is not the goal. The goal is the evening — the specific evening, in the room, where a film plays and then people turn to each other and talk. You cannot mass-produce that.
Growth is not the goal. The goal is the evening — the room, the film, and the conversation that follows.Toribio Domenico, Festival Director
Your selections come from all over the world. Is that reach deliberate?
Completely deliberate. From the beginning I wanted a programme that did not simply reflect one country or one circuit. A festival that only hears from filmmakers nearby ends up showing the same handful of sensibilities every year. We work hard to be found by filmmakers far from the usual centres, and it pays off in the room — the 8th Edition's documentary winner came from South Africa, and that film could not have come from anywhere else. The breadth is the whole texture of the festival.
Does running a festival this size constrain you?
Of course. We run lean. We rely on the association, on a very small team, on people who give their evenings. Kimberly holds the whole operation together with a discipline I don't possess. But the constraint is the point. It keeps us honest about what a festival is actually for. We only accept as many films as we can actually watch with attention and show properly. We would rather do a small thing well than a large thing carelessly.
What are you looking for in the ninth edition?
The same thing I always look for, which I can never quite describe in advance. A film that knows why it exists. It does not need to be polished — some of the work that has stayed with me longest was rough at the edges. But it has to be necessary. You can feel it in the first minute, whether a film had to be made or merely could be. I want the ones that had to be.
Any advice for someone submitting for the first time?
Send us the strange one. Filmmakers often have two films — the safe one they think a festival wants, and the odd, personal one they made for themselves. They submit the safe one. Please don't. We have a whole category for the experimental, and even in fiction and documentary, the work that wins is almost never the one that played it safe. Trust the odd film. That is the one we are waiting for.
And after nine years, what keeps you doing it?
The lights coming up. Every edition, there is a moment after a film ends when the room is silent for a second too long, and then everyone exhales at once and starts talking. That second of shared silence — that is the entire reason. I would run the festival for that alone.
Submissions for the 9th Edition of Inte Cinema Festival are open now on FilmFreeway.
Inte Cinema Festival is an independent short film festival and cultural association based in Rome. Submissions for the 9th Edition are open now on FilmFreeway.