03 Jun 16th Film Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema coming this very summer: from 26 to 30 August
Today, the 16th International Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema should start in Izola: the traditional five-day film greeting to summer which attracts thousands of visitors from near and far every year. Although the epidemic changed our original plan, Kino Otok is still coming just before the summer joys of this year will be over. The festival will take place in Izola from 26 to 30 August 2020, before and after that also in Ljubljana and several places in southwestern Slovenia. The Festival will take place in a situation-adapted format and taking into account all applicable preventive measures and instructions.
Kino Otok for new times
The announcement of the epidemic in mid-March caught the creative team of the 16th Kino Otok – Isola Cinema festival at a time when most agreements had been reached with domestic and international partners. When the collaboration has been confirmed by all project collaborators. When the call for the Video on the Beach section and for volunteers from all winds were in full swing. And last but not least, when the film, professional and social program was largely composed and the core team, after almost a year of preparations for the new edition, was already looking forward to meeting guests and visitors.
The cancellation was out of the question so we decided to postpone the festival. In the last two months we rethought the program and the way of realizing this year’s Kino Otok. In this way, despite the new (and changing) circumstances, we will be able to provide the most authentic festival experience live and also online. The film, professional and accompanying program of the festival will be carefully outlined by the end of June and presented to the public as soon as possible. It is already known that the call for the shorts section Video on the Beach was successful this year as well, with a record 179 applications from more than 30 different countries.
No man is an island, we are all an archipelago
The slogan No man is an island has been following the Kino Otok festival since the first editions of the festival, when it was created in Izola, a former island, with the idea of connecting countless individuals into a community around film and other arts. Recent collective experience has reminded us anew how unbearable the absence of touch is and how urgent is the need for human contact, for a living encounter. Therefore, this year’s Kino Otok will strive even more than before to unite and cooperate at various levels.
Among other things, we will connect into a program archipelago with other film, music, theater or art festivals. In Slovenian Istria, we will continue our cooperation with the Summer Festival of Primorska and the JEFF Festival, at the same time we are starting a multi-year cooperation with the Motovun Film Festival, which is being created on the Croatian side of Istria. We will expand and deepen our cooperation with the cross-border film festival Hommage To A Vision, which is prepared every autumn by the Kinoatelje in Goriška region. We will connect with the international short film festival FeKK, which will take place in Ljubljana just before Kino Otok in Izola. Last but not least, we are continuing the oldest international festival connection with the Innsbruck International Film Festival from Austria.
The producer of the festival is Otok, an Institute for the development of film culture. The co-producers of the festival are the Center for Culture, Sports and Events in Izola, the Italian self-governing national community Izola, the Slovenian Cinematheque and Kinoatelje. The City Cinema Kinodvor is the partner of the festival.
The 16th edition of the Kino Otok – Isola Cinema international film festival is supported by the following public co-financiers: the Slovenian Film Center, the European Commission’s Creative Europe – MEDIA sub-program, the Municipality of Izola, the Ministry of Public Administration and the Ministry of Culture.
See you on the Island of Cinema!