Internazionale Festival, 11th edition: 5 – 6 – 7 October.

Since 2007, In Ferrara, the beginning of October is marked by the arrival of big crowd of people. Wouldn’t happen to be about the suggestive season’s colors? Or just because Ferrara has a really appreciated historical center? No, not so far from the right answer, but there is something more. Each year, in the first days of this month, here takes place the Internazionale Festival.

Just a step back: what is Internazionale?
Internazionale is an Italian magazine, that publishes the best of the journals from all over the world weekly. Traslating the most illustrious journalists’ articles about relevant and actual topics, it gives you the change to get informed by someone that is directly living or studying that situation. So, if you want some news about the last elections in Sweden, or the huge row of migrants from the South America heading to US, or just have a little taste of the last book of an important Indian sociologist, Internazionale is for you.

In parallel to the progress of the magazine, the directors started to organize this meeting of international journalists in the splendid location of Ferrara. Here, inside some historical locations (as the Estense Castle, and not just), or University rooms, journalists hold their conferences, debating with other guests, showing their competences and answering to the audience questions. Graphic – novelists have the chance to explain their works, and movie – maker about their documentaries as well.

I spent two days there. Many conferences in different points of the city, since 10.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m. You can ask all the information you need at the main infopoint in Cathedral Square. Several topics: this year great focus to “Big Data”, as new source of power: pros and cons in the era of smart city. But you could listen about global warming as well, or the strong right wing in Europe nowadays. What about feminist movements, in the past and today? It’s impossible to make a short list of all the conferences: look at the link program below.

Among many, I had the chance to listen Jacopo Iacoboni speech, Italian journalist of “La Stampa”, who was introducing his book “L’esperimento” (The experiment), showing us how the first concepts of 5 stars movement (the party with the largest number of votes in the last elections, actually in our Government Formation with Salvini’s League) started with a little experiment from one of its founders, Gianroberto Casaleggio: an example about how easy it is to manipulate the choices of a group of people, doesn’t matter how big is it.

An other conference I really appreciated was “The womans role against Organised Crime”: Valentina Fiore talked about her “Libera” experience, an organization committed to fight Italian Mafia in the entire territory, and Anabel Hernandez, Mexican journalist, explained us the dangerous and hard condition of Mexican press and society in general.

Other special guests of this 11th edition: Jhon Eligon (The New York Times), Gary Younge (The Guardian), Eric Jozsef (Libération), Hana Al Khamri (Saudi Journalist), Elly Schlein (MEP), Dieudonnè Wamu Oyatambwe (Congolese political scientist) and others.

So, any plan for the next October?

Usefull links:
https://www.internazionale.it
https://www.internazionale.it/festival