The Schools Section of the Festival has always been a regular ren- dezvous for pupils and teachers interested in intercultural dialogue and world citizenship, through films which offer an unusual point of view on real stories or fictional ones concerning the cultures of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

A selection of the films at the Festival is proposed to middle and secon- dary schools in order to promote, even amongst the very young, origi- nal views on cinema and the world.
What makes this proposal particularly significant is that some of the directors and guests of the festival will be present at the shows so to offer pupils and teachers a privileged opportunity to exchange que- stions, reflections and curiosities aroused by seeing the films.

The choice of the titles has once again been oriented to short films by African directors – Afronauts, Homecoming, La virée à Paname, Margelle, Les souliers de Aïd and Twaaga – for the possibility they offer to restore the plurality of visions of Africa today, with different approaches that go from the genre of realism to the fable, from scien- ce-fiction to surrealism.

For the first time we have included in the mini-festival of films for the Schools Section a film by a European director: the documentary Wind of change by the Norwegian director Julia Dahr, on the dramatic ef- fects of global warming in Kenya. It is a film from the Festival section Films that Feed, dedicated to the themes of the forthcoming EXPO. The experience of a family of farmers, at the centre of the filmic story, fighting against the climate changes, was really shared by the filmma- ker as well, who was able to understand the different inner tensions of those who live in a period of prolonged drought, knowing that its cau- se is not a whim of nature.

Lastly, it was right to include the Chinese feature film Einstein and Einstein by Cao Baoping, that through an increasingly thrilling emotional involvement denounces in firm tones some educational, family and scholastic models of modern China. The film lends itself to a comparison with our educational models and, in general, to an in-depth examination of the relations between adults and adolescents today, in various and diversified economic and cultural contexts.