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Feel like vis­it­ing some­where new but don’t have the time or money right now? A film fest­iv­al is the next best thing. If you want to under­stand a coun­try and its cul­ture it’s hard to go past watch­ing their com­mer­cial cinema – their mul­ti­plex and block­buster fare rather than the arthouse.

That’s why the region­al film fest­ivals are so import­ant – and the Italian Film Festival is king with attend­ance num­bers every year that are great­er than all the oth­er region­al fest­ivals put togeth­er. Festival dir­ect­or Tony Lambert has been at this for over a dozen years and his for­mula works – a well-constructed sur­vey of the cur­rent Italian cinema fea­tur­ing broad com­ed­ies, romances and his­tor­ic­al dra­mas. These are the films that Italians have been watching.

This year’s fest­iv­al opens at the Paramount on the 9^th of October with a gala screen­ing of Welcome to the North (a sequel to the 2010 smash hit Welcome to the South, itself a remake of the French com­edy Welcome to the Sticks). After that we have two and a half weeks of screen­ings with most films play­ing four or five times.

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