The first official award for The Interview at Sea and other recognitions
Among the most memorable and intense stages in the festival journey of The Interview at Sea, one of its many appearances in Sicily could not be missing. At the Cefalù Film Festival, our film effectively stayed for an entire year.
The first official news of its participation dates all the way back to April 2024.
We only announced it in August, when the long process was beginning to take shape (here’s the article). At that point, The Interview at Sea had gone from being “selected” to “nominated” for an award. Additionally, the festival organizers had announced that a first part of the event would take place in early November.
As we’ve already mentioned in previous articles about the complicated autumn we experienced, there wasn’t a chance to keep up with updates—until another major announcement arrived. In an official press release dated December 7, 2024, The Interview at Sea received its first official award. And not just any award: the FOCUS Award (Film, Originality, Culture, Uniqueness, Stories). At that point, we couldn’t keep the news to ourselves, even though we were still behind on recounting the events of the preceding months. In our article from December 11, we explained why this particular award meant so much to us.
The Interview at Sea is an unconventional film in many ways. It wasn’t conceived as a film, but as a research project: it’s a documentary, but a hybrid one that uses fiction and storytelling to distill many stories and a cultural heritage at risk of extinction. In short, this was exactly the award we hoped to receive, one that, in its acronym, encapsulates everything The Interview at Sea is and aspires to be.
But in that December article, we also shared another very important piece of news. Thanks to the Cefalù Festival, The Interview at Sea landed on the streaming platform MyMovies ONE for about ten days as part of the Cinema Mediterraneo showcase (here’s the link to the film’s page on MyMovies).
Seeing our film appear on our favorite streaming platform felt like receiving a second award. Beyond the significant opportunity to be seen and judged by a wide audience of film lovers, we have to admit: it was quite emotional to suddenly see our film featured in the same place where we usually go to watch arthouse films, independent cinema, and the best of both Italian and international festivals (here’s the link to the platform, which we highly recommend to everyone).
This report on such a rich and multifaceted journey through the Cefalù Film Festival may seem complete—but one important piece is still missing, along with an official announcement we haven’t shared yet, even though it dates back, once again, several months.
In the next article, we’ll wrap up the story of the Cefalù Film Festival with one final piece of news that we’ve saved until now—because it gives us the chance to pause once again, as we’ve done before (here’s the article), to reflect and delve deeper into a broader issue we consider to be very important.
