Linea d'Ombra Festival

A festival looking at Europe from the heart of Campania

The Linea d'Ombra Festival is one of the longest-running and most recognizable film events in Southern Italy. Born in 1996 in Salerno, the capital of the province of the same name in Campania, it has grown into an international appointment dedicated to cinema and, more broadly, to contemporary creativity. The artistic direction is led by Peppe D'Antonio and Boris Sollazzo, while the organization is managed by the association SalernoInFestival ETS, with the support of the Municipality of Salerno, the Campania Region, and the Campania Region Film Commission.

The name, which recalls Joseph Conrad's famous novel, says much about the event's editorial line: to tell stories of transitions, thresholds, and the moment a young gaze becomes an auteur's vision. It is no coincidence that the festival has built a solid reputation over the years as a showcase for emerging directors and a meeting place for film schools, universities, and audiovisual professionals.

Competitive sections

The heart of the program consists of international competitions, which select works produced in Europe and around the world each year:

• Passaggi d'Europa — competition for feature films (fiction, animation, or documentary) produced in Europe;
• CortoEuropa — competition reserved for European short films with a maximum duration of twenty minutes, in all expressive forms;
• UniFest — section dedicated to audiovisual works created by university students from all over the world;
• OpenSpace — a showcase for productions from Campania and the Salerno area, including shorts, documentaries, music videos, and digital experiments.

The main prizes are cash awards: the Passaggi d'Europa award grants 3,000 euros to the best feature film, while CortoEuropa awards 2,000 euros to the best short film. Alongside expert juries, the popular juries operate as one of the festival's signature features: hundreds of spectators vote on the competing works, turning the audience into an active part of the selection process.

More than just screenings

Linea d'Ombra has long since moved beyond the format of a simple film festival. Each edition features dozens of events that intertwine cinema, music, books, visual arts, virtual reality, video games, and training. The masterclasses and talks with authors, screenwriters, actors, and producers are open to the public and designed primarily for students and young professionals. There are also midnight marathons dedicated to a guest author, retrospectives, and lifetime achievement awards.

This interdisciplinary approach makes the festival an opportunity for discussion on the transformations of audiovisual language, from new production technologies to serial narrative forms, without losing the direct relationship with the host city.

Venues in Salerno

The event takes place in various locations throughout the historic center and the city, including the Sala Pier Paolo Pasolini on Via Alfonso Alvarez, the Piccolo Teatro Porta Catena, the Complesso San Michele, the Cinema Fatima, the Virtual Museum of the Salerno Medical School in the Church of San Gregorio, and Palazzo Sant'Agostino. This geography invites you to discover the medieval alleys, the Norman Cathedral, and the Trieste seafront between screenings.

November in Salerno: the context

The autumn timing is a deliberate choice: November offers a Salerno far from the seaside tourism of the nearby Amalfi Coast—more intimate and urban, with full theaters and a city center animated by the cultural season. It is also the time when the city prepares for the Luci d'Artista light festival, and those arriving for the festival easily find restaurants, hotels, and connections without the difficulties of the high season.

Why it's worth attending

Those who love European auteur cinema, short films, and debut works will find a selection at Linea d'Ombra that is rarely available in traditional theaters, almost always accompanied by the presence of the authors. For the local public, it is the event that has kept Salerno connected to international festival circuits for three decades; for those coming from outside, it is an intelligent way to visit the province of Salerno in the off-season.