Introduzione

This introduction opens the volume Festival e critica. Una storia incrociata (Meltemi, 2026), developed within the PRIN 2022 research project Reframing Italian Film Festivals: Histories, Politics, Cultures. Taking the Venice Film Festival as its historical starting point, the essay traces the relationship between film festivals and film criticism from its early institutionalisation in the postwar period to its contemporary transformations. The central argument is that festivals and criticism have co-evolved in a relationship of mutual constitution: festivals providing spaces and frameworks of legitimation for critical discourse, while criticism has contributed to shaping the symbolic identity of the festivals themselves. As the festival landscape has expanded globally, festivals have increasingly become critical devices in their own right, reinterpreting cinema through discursive practices and viewing rituals. The introduction concludes by presenting the volume's structure, which moves from the historical construction of aesthetic canons, through curatorial and institutional politics, to new forms of mediation in the contemporary audiovisual ecosystem, closing with a series of interviews with critics who have had direct experience in the festival world.