Our cultural heritage is alive. He blooms and watch us, waiting for our intervention. It is aware of being in danger. Its survival is compromised not only by looters or the damage makers, but also by the actions of who demean, exploit or, worse, ignore it.

Maurizio Bettini wrote that if it is true that monuments need to be safe­guarded from deterioration and destruction, equally fundamental is the exercise of ‘cultural memory’, that’s say the widespread awareness of the past, shared by a community, which results not only from the histori­cal knowledge of past events, but also from the heritage of stories, tradi­tions, images that form the ‘cultural conscience’ of the community itself.

Starting from this reflection, this year’s leitmotif makes its way, sum­marised by the sentence: saving the heritage. It is the common theme that links film competition, meetings and round tables, training and entertainment activities. Each piece of the program deals with this is­sue, both urgent and complex, and communicates it according to a renewed language. An example is given by the forty films selected, in­cluding international and national premieres: not only traditional docu­mentaries, but also short films, docufictions and hybridizations inspired to street art and photography. Forty stories set all over the world, whose protagonists fight to protect heritage from inattention, commodification, anger, sometimes from History itself.

The result is a plural gaze, far from the clichés and stereotypes to which contemporary society is slowly becoming accustomed. Moreover, it is an invitation to participate, a call to action addressed to all the mem­bers of our society, no one excluded.

Will we be able to save our heritage, then? Who knows.

However, we will have tried together.