The idea behind the award is to promote filmmaking that deals with issues related to peace: the denunciation of injustice, dialogue between parties, mediation processes, creative and nonviolent conflict resolution.
Our societies are becoming more and more aware that there is no future in conflicts that use violence as a solution; there is no future in the persistence of policies of exploitation and oppression; there is no future in cultural, religious, racial discrimination; there is no future in viewing this planet and its inhabitants as totally enslaved to the anthropocentric desire for domination. Humanity's destiny is to learn to coexist by harmonizing the many differences that Earth's existence has created: any attempt at domination is doomed to failure.
The award was the brainchild of Nanni Salio, historic president of the Centro Studi Sereno Regis, which was immediately adopted by the then director of the Torino Film Festival, Gianni Amelio. It was 2011. Since then, for 13 years, the Gandhi's Glasses Award has been awarded within the annual editions of TFF.
The jury for the 2024 Gandhi's Glasses Award consists of:
Enrica Capra, founder in 2004 and CEO of the Turin-based company Graffiti Film, has produced award-winning documentaries for the international market, selected at major festivals and distributed worldwide. In recent years, she has increasingly devoted herself to fiction, developing feature films (“Breaking Free,” by Belgian Patric Jean; “Alien Food”; “Sottosopra,” by Antonello Murgia, from the novel of the same name by Milena Agus) and producing promising debuts such as “Des Etoiles,” the first feature film by French director Dyana Gaye. With a background in literature and history and experience as an assistant director in theater, she previously worked as a manager in the publishing industry and then joined the development team of an Italian film production company. She was vice president of Doc/it in 2011-2013 and is a member of EFA.
Irene Dionisio (Turin, 1986), is a director, screenwriter and artist. Her artistic production includes video installations, documentaries, and fiction films that have participated in numerous international festivals: La fabbrica è piena (2011), Sponde (2015), and Le ultime cose (2017). She has been nominated for Golden Globes and David Donatello awards and won a Special Silver Ribbon for screenplay. She directed the LGBTQI Festival - Lovers - under the National Cinema Museum for three years. In 2020 she was awarded the Giuseppe Bertolucci Prize for artistic innovation. She is currently working on her next fiction film, a documentary and a book.
Maddalena Merlino, from Piacenza, born in 1973, took her first steps as an author in Rai in the 2000s. As a director she makes works always suspended between fiction and reality that take her to festivals and reviews all over the world. Together with Claudio Paletto for years she curates Strane Visioni, a historic review of independent cinema at Amantes in Turin. Since 2020, he has been collaborating with the newly founded Streeen.org, the platform for auteur cinema.
Born in Morocco but raised in Italy, Elia Moutamid is a film director and actor who has based his cinematic narrative on the concept of the other, the journey, and self-analysis often using self-mockery as a register. In 2017 he released his first feature film “TALIEN” winner of the special jury prize at the 35thTFF and later the prestigious NASTRO D'ARGENTO DOC 2018 for best first feature, followed by “KUFID” in 2020 and “MAKA” in 2023.
Francesco Vignarca has been working for twenty years in the field of peace and disarmament, and is currently Campaign Coordinator of the Italian Peace and Disarmament Network. He works on the issues of military spending, private defense companies, military procurement, arms trade control, industrial reconversion, the arms race and proliferation, and pathways to disarmament and nonviolence, performing both research and coordination tasks in many campaigns promoted by the Italian peace movement.
