The first edition in Apulia Region from 26th to 30th November
The visual media as an occasion of dialogue and meeting Inter – religious

At the beginning of 3000 men and people discover and recover the values of the faith that has marked the end of their civilization and the history of their places.
A film festival with a documentary subject is the occasion for utilizing the visual media as an iconographic recall to places and characters that have marked a thousand-year history of faith, as suggests Antonio Conte while introducing his latest “creature”: “Itinerarium Fidei - Characters and Places of the Soul. – International Religious Tourist Film Festival”.
The journalist Antonio Conte, who has been caring for more than forty years about tourist films, is considered one of the best experts of this matter on an international level.
He is the chairman of the Tourist Press European Federation and honorary chairman of the International Committee for the Coordination of Tourist Film Festivals ITCO, taking place all over the world.
In this capacity he announced the new initiative that becomes an autonomous festival, after being for more than forty years one of the session of the Tourist Film Festival.
This year, two films in only one are therefore expected. Besides the 45° edition of the International Tourist Film Festival there will be “Itinerarium Fidei”, the International Festival of Religious Film.
Among the locations in Apulia Region that will see the happening of the two events: Lecce (capital of the Baroque style), the castle of Copertino( the land of the Saint that could fly, Saint Giuseppe from Copertino and protector of aviators and students) and the castle of Otranto, the town of 800 martyrs.
The wide and articulate program will include, besides the presentation of films from more than 60 countries all over the continent, meetings, round tables and several discussions about problems of tourism on different levels and religious tourism.
There will be representatives of the main religions and faiths: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists; sects will be obviously excluded.
Apulia Region, the door towards East, becomes in this way an occasion of meeting and dialogue among different people and cultures.
Antonio Conte gave this announcement in Poland, during the giving of the “Premio alla carriera” (in inglese Career Prize) to the film director Kristof Zanussi, on occasion of the Tourist Film in Plock (old capital of Poland). There was also a numerous delegation from Salento led by Luigi De Luca, president of The Institute of Mediterranean Cultures.
The delegation itself has later paid homage to the film director Zanussi with a valuable volume titled “Il Mediterraneo” and has invited him to the important inter- religious event that will be held in Salento. Zanussi was very pleased with the invitation of coming back to the wonderful city of Lecce and in Salento that he has visited and appreciated in the past.


CHARACTERS AND PLACES OF THE SOUL
Images to reflect about the pathway of the Soul in a virtual “Via Francigena” where characters and interior and exemplary situations meet on a national and international film itinerary.
Past and contemporary figures, hermitages and places of cult full of architectural and artistic preciousness, historical memories, apparitions and legends are the borders of the soul upon which this International Religious Film Festival is based.
It involves some meaningful examples of a cinema devoted to the theme of the religious faith.
Men, women, places that have been and are still now witness of a convinced faith , of a total devotion to the service of God and of brothers over the different historical ages, a witness in the most different geographical areas and in past and present civilizations.
The festival in its unique originality is a part of an ecumenical testimony at the beginning of the third millennium and is a noteworthy element in the apparatus of cinema.
“There is a wide range of recalls to religious tourism that are to be appreciated later on – Antonio Conte still tells us – beyond traditional itineraries, there is a tourism of the soul in places where the values of existence and being can be recovered, there is a world of situations and figures to be understood, lived and imitated in order to understand better what is most important in one’s own life.
This festival full with images, music and comments is just an itinerary-invitation to discover the paths of the soul.