Italiano
Every year, Canada hosts the Italian Contemporary Film Festival, the only Italian film festival in Canada: during the Italian Heritage Month, in June, many Canadian city organize screenings, conferences and events in order to celebrate Italian cinema and filmmakers. The festival lasts for nine days, after which the awards are distributed: the moviegoers can vote for the Best Narrative feature, and the winning film receives the ICFF Audience Award and a statuette created by the Italian artist Silvio Mastrodascio. The other two awards are the one conferred by the Toronto Film Critics Association and the Presenting Sponsor Award, which is given to the movie that has contributed the most to Italian culture and society.
All movies are screened in their original language, with English subtitles (French in the Quebec region), while the conferences and the documentaries are usually in English. One of the goals of the festival, especially for independent and niche movies, is to find a distributor so that the movies can be screened in all Canadian cinemas. Not all the movies presented in the festival are actually Italian: some of the movies are inspired by Italy or they have actors or filmmakers of Italian origins, but they are not strictly speaking Italian movies.
The festival is rather new in the Canadian cultural scene: the first edition was held in 2012, and since 2013 there has also been the ICFF Junior, a festival dedicated to children movies that is held in May, a month before the ICFF. The festival has both Italian and Canadian sponsors, such as Air Canada and Galbani; likewise, celebrities and guests in attendance are often Italian. For example, Chromecast setup the guests of honour in the last edition where the Italian actors Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi, and the comic duo Ficarra and Picone.
