Brussels, the final institutional landing
While, unexpectedly, the festival journey resumed in November with the prestigious Festival de Cinema de Girona and the emerging COLIFFE (the Italian festival is still ongoing), the last month of 2025 opens for The Interview at Sea with a special screening that carries the meaning and the flavor of a true final arrival. This event represents a very special part of our film’s distribution path — entirely original and unique.
Already with the screening held during the G7 Agriculture – Divinazione Expo 2024 (here the final article), we had brought the voices of fishermen and the major issues affecting the sector to national institutional attention. Even though in Syracuse we were certainly in an international context, reaching Brussels — and even more, doing so with a special screening inside the European Parliament — allows us to bring our message to the heart of Europe, right into the institutional setting where fisheries policies are shaped and defined.
“What is Europe? Actually, you explain it to me, because I still haven’t understood it!”
That’s what the helmsman of The Interview at Sea says in the middle of an outburst. He says it to the implicit interviewer — and therefore, in a sense, to the audience as well — and now he will say it directly to those in Europe who bear responsibility for decision-making. The film aims precisely to explain the relationship between Europe and Italian fisheries, giving voice both to grievances and to opportunities that often remain only partially grasped.
Through the film, fishermen will speak directly to Members of the European Parliament and even to the European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans, Costas Kadis, who will also take part in the debate following the screening.
Presenting the film will of course be its director and screenwriter, sociologist Ludovico Ferro, who will also respond to questions from the highly qualified audience.
Everything will take place on 3 December 2025 at 3:30 PM at the European Parliament building in Rue Wiertz 60, Brussels.
This is a unique and extremely important opportunity to address the topic of fisheries — its challenges and its value for coastal communities in Italy and throughout Europe. Above all, it represents one of the high points of a much broader cultural project centered on the idea that cinema can simultaneously serve as a language through which to discuss technical issues with non-experts, and as an alternative and complementary medium for presenting the results of analyses and research conducted with scientific methods. Indeed, as we explain in the dedicated section of the film’s website, The Interview at Sea was born from extensive field research and years of study of the sector. The film anticipates a book that will provide an analytical account not only of the research findings, but also of the entire adventure of making the film. And even in this case, our aim is not limited to industry professionals, who in recent years have already had access to various research reports on fields — such as aquaculture — closely connected to capture fisheries.
We will therefore return to these digital pages (on the website and on Facebook) to report on what emerges from this important screening event, and later — at a still undefined time — on paper as well. We truly did not expect the distribution of The Interview at Sea to become such an extensive and articulated journey. So now we are focusing on the next milestones in our path. The first month of 2026 will open with a new and unmissable special screening — this time dedicated to the general public!
