Giffoni Film Festival, cinema as a workshop of empathy for young people

The Giffoni Film Festival, first festival in the world dedicated to cinema for young people, expresses a good overall level of empathy among the young people involved. The active cultural and participatory context of the festival fosters processes of mutual listening, sharing and emotional awareness, making it possible to develop fundamental skills for the construction of healthier, more inclusive and aware social relations. In particular, the language of cinema, at the heart of Giffoni, stimulates processes of emotional identification and understanding of others' experiences.

This was revealed by the study Empathy in Youth in the Digital Era: An Experiential Workshop at the Giffoni Film Festival, carried out by the Department of Mental Health of the Salerno Local Health Authority and published in the Italian Journal of Psychiatry. A research whose protagonists were precisely the young people from all over the world who every year meet in the town in the Salerno area.

In the last edition of the festival, two workshops dedicated to the development of empathy and emotional skills were organised, involving a sample of young people aged between 16 and 25, members of the festival juries. The proposed activities stimulated moments of confrontation, reflection and sharing among the participants, using the language of cinema, storytelling and intercultural dialogue as tools to foster understanding of one's own emotions and those of others.

The work was carried out by the Salerno Local Health Authority in collaboration with the European Biomedical Research Institute of Salerno (Ebris), a body that has been engaged for years in the study of psychological dynamics in adolescence, with particular attention to emotional development processes, and is signed by Annarita Vignapiano, Stefania Landi, Francesco Monaco, Antonella Boccia, Anna Longobardi, Raffaele Malvone, Ernesta Panarello, Benedetta Di Gruttola, Luca Steardo Jr. and Giulio Corrivetti.

"The terrain of loneliness and isolation of young people today represents a powerful risk factor for well-being", according to Giulio Corrivetti, director of the Department of Mental Health of the Salerno Local Health Authority, "for harmonious development and, unfortunately, it is also at the root of the growing psychic suffering of adolescents, which fuels the number of cases of psychological and psychiatric concern, which is dramatically on the rise". The professionals involved in the research "are learning from the Giffoni Film Festival's experience to finalise and adapt their mission and objectives to combat such suffering".