By Amy Pigeon
ICFF isn’t content with asking audiences to sit back and watch. It invites them into the experience itself, blurring the lines between cinema, conversation, culture, and community.
Celebrating its fifteenth edition, the festival carries the confidence of something that knows exactly what it is while continuing to push itself forward. Two additional days have been added to the schedule this year—evidence that what began as a film festival has become something much larger: a month-long exploration of contemporary Italian culture through cinema, architecture, music, food, design, sport and now, increasingly, technology.
And yet, despite all of that growth, opening night still felt remarkably intimate.
It began at Illuminarium inside Toronto’s Distillery District with AiRTIFICIAL VISIONS, an ambitious new exhibition curated by ICFF founder and creative director Cristiano de Florentiis. Presented by Rogers, the immersive experience gathers international artists working with artificial intelligence as a creative medium, inviting audiences to consider questions surrounding memory, identity and authorship in an era increasingly shaped by algorithms.
Standing beneath towering digital landscapes and shifting portraits, it was difficult not to think about the conversations dominating our current moment. There is excitement around AI, certainly, but also anxiety. Questions about what is gained, what is lost, and whether technology enhances human creativity or threatens to replace it.
Cristiano’s remarks offered a more hopeful perspective.
The exhibition doesn’t position artificial intelligence as the artist. Instead, it asks what happens when artists use these emerging tools in service of distinctly human ideas. The result is less about technology itself and more about the persistence of emotion, memory and cultural identity.
It was an unexpectedly fitting way to begin the festival’s fifteenth year.
ICFF has always been interested in preserving heritage while simultaneously embracing evolution. This year’s programming seems determined to prove those two impulses don’t need to exist in opposition.
It is also one of the things I admire most about Cristiano. For as long as I’ve known his work, he has approached cultural programming with a kind of fearless intentionality—taking strategic risks not for novelty’s sake, but because he genuinely believes Italian culture is expansive enough to hold tradition and experimentation in the same space. While many festivals become increasingly cautious as they mature, ICFF seems energized by asking bigger questions and creating new points of entry into Italian culture. Architecture, opera, artificial intelligence, football, contemporary art—under someone else’s direction, these ideas might feel disconnected. Under Cristiano’s, they somehow become part of the same conversation.
Tony Gentilucci of Rogers touched on this beautifully during his remarks, recalling a line from Shall We Dance? that Jennifer Lopez delivers: “Be this alive.” It stayed with me long after the speeches ended.
Perhaps because I understand exactly what she means.
Years ago, when I first fell in love with salsa dancing, it wasn’t simply about learning steps or technique. It was about discovering a version of myself that felt more awake, more present, more joyful. Dancing made me feel intensely alive. It gave me permission to inhabit the moment completely—to stop thinking, stop planning, stop worrying, and simply experience. Italian film has always done this for me since I watched Cinema Paradiso for the first time. Something shifted inside me. Not just because of the plot itself, but because of the way Italian cinema seems to insist that life is worth paying attention to—that beauty matters, that memory matters, that people matter. It asks us to feel more deeply, laugh more freely, linger longer.
And perhaps that is what Tony was getting at.
“Everything Cristiano touches seems to come alive.”
Not in the sense that it becomes bigger, but that it becomes more human, more immersive, more participatory. You don’t simply attend an ICFF event. You find yourself inside it—wandering through exhibitions, discovering artists, sharing a glass of wine with strangers, laughing in a theatre full of people, and leaving with the distinct feeling that you experienced something rather than merely consumed it.
Leaving Illuminarium, guests filtered into the festival village, where the philosophical conversations of the evening quickly gave way to something more familiar: aperitivo.
Lavazza cold brew anchored one corner, Ferrero added moments of sweetness, Barilla reminded everyone that pasta can still be creative, Eataly brought its signature energy, while glasses of Masi prosecco moved easily between friends, colleagues and first-time introductions.
That’s one of the things ICFF does exceptionally well.
You come for a screening, but inevitably find yourself staying for the conversations.
You meet architects discussing cinema, filmmakers discussing football, designers discussing opera. Someone is debating Italian politics. Someone else is planning their next trip to Sicily. A producer is reconnecting with a director they haven’t seen in years.
For a festival centred around storytelling, there is an awful lot of story-making happening before anyone even sits down inside the theatre.
Then came Follemente (Madly).
It may have been the perfect opening-night film.
Directed by Paolo Genovese, the premise is deceptively simple: a first date between two people navigating the excitement, fear and uncertainty of getting to know someone new. What makes the film extraordinary is that it allows us inside their heads, giving voice to the competing emotions, insecurities, impulses and internal negotiations we all experience but rarely admit aloud.
It is wildly funny because it feels so true.
Everyone has edited themselves during a first date. Everyone has second-guessed a comment, replayed an awkward silence or worried about appearing too eager, too distant, too serious, too unavailable.
The audience laughed constantly.
Not polite festival laughter.
Knee-slapping, “I-feel-personally-attacked-by-how-accurate-this-is” laughter.
The kind that happens when you recognise yourself on screen.
And then, almost without warning, the film becomes deeply touching.
Beneath its humour sits something more profound about vulnerability and the courage required to let someone see you exactly as you are.
By the time the credits rolled, there were plenty of smiles and more than a few misty eyes, mine included.
Which made the evening feel unexpectedly cohesive–although perhaps, with ICFF, it shouldn’t have been.
We had spent the first half of the night contemplating artificial intelligence, identity and the future of creativity. We ended it with a film that celebrates everything technology still struggles to replicate: intuition, chemistry, uncertainty, longing and the irrational optimism that persuades us to keep putting ourselves out there in search of connection.
For a festival celebrating fifteen years, it felt like an appropriate reminder.
ICFF may continue to evolve through immersive exhibitions, expanded programming and increasingly ambitious cultural offerings, but its greatest strength remains unchanged.
It creates spaces where people gather, share experiences and leave carrying the same stories home with them.
And after experiencing opening night for the first time, it’s easy to understand why the festival keeps growing.
People are still hungry for experiences that feel human.
ICFF simply continues finding new ways to deliver them. – VV
