One Ocean Foundation and Pianeta Mare Film Festival announcetheir collaboration for the third edition of the Festival, which will be held in Napoli from October 7 to 11

This partnership stems from a shared desire to engage younger generations, raising awareness of the importance of the sea for all of us and inspiring its preservation through culture and art. Both organizations share the urgent need to involve young people, making them protagonists and agents of change through cinema, an art form that combines photography, videomaking, music, and theater. It can be particularly effective in presenting and promoting issues of great importance at this historical moment, such as environmental sciences and the role of youth in understanding, protecting, and safeguarding biodiversity.

One Ocean Foundation’s participation in the Festival includes the screening of the documentary produced by the Foundation, "Posidonia oceanica, a Hope for the Mediterranean," which offers an in-depth look at the restoration process of seagrass meadows, one of the most important marine plants. It is crucial both for the well-being of underwater environments and for oxygenating the Earth's surface. The short film focuses on activities carried out in the Bergeggi Island Marine Protected Area in 2023, as part of One Ocean Foundation's "Blue Forest" project.

The partnership will continue throughout the year with One Ocean's commitment to promoting and screening, in agreement with the Festival's Artistic Committee, the best short films made with smartphones by students from the Festival's Lab, directed by 28-year-old director Valerio Ferrara, winner of the La Cinef Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Some of the competing short films will be shown at various events in Italy, such as the Foundation’s Young Summit and during the upcoming One Ocean Week in Milan in June 2025.

This collaboration highlights the importance of engaging young people and the need to promote new ways of communication and action for environmental issues and ocean protection. High-quality national and international cinema, as well as smartphone videomaking by young filmmakers, will become a powerful tool for raising awareness and disseminating scientific and artistic knowledge, using an accessible and engaging language.

As Riccardo Bonadeo, President of One Ocean Foundation, emphasizes: “Today, more than ever, it is crucial to find ways to involve and engage young people on the topic of environmental protection. The seventh art is an important tool as it fascinates and inspires, inviting active reflection. We are proud to establish this collaboration with the Pianeta Mare Film Festival and to do so in Naples, a city at the heart of the Mediterranean, which we believe can and should be an excellent platform for environmental protection.”

Professor Ferdinando Boero, President of the Pianeta Mare Film Festival of Naples and the Dohrn Foundation, commented: “There is an urgency among young people to better understand climate change, the role of the marine world, and what can be done in their daily lives to avoid passively and anxiously witnessing the issues we see in cinema or in TV series on streaming platforms. The alliance with One Ocean Foundation is a valuable opportunity to introduce students from Milan and Northern Italy to the films and shorts from the Naples Festival on climate change, the marine world, and biodiversity, selected from the world’s top festivals. At the same time, it provides an opportunity to train young people in the intelligent, artistic, and technical use of smartphone videomaking with zero-budget, making it accessible to all.”

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