The best of investigative journalism at the Dig Festival
focus on Italy in the vote: these are the themes on which the over 80 events will focus, including workshops, film premieres, meetings on art and concerts that will take place over the four days of the Dig Festival, from 22 to 25 September in Modena, in the spaces of the San Carlo college, the Astra cinema and the San Paolo complex.
“Since 2015, what makes Dig Festival unique is its attention to deepening and
contamination, to free and oblique gazes, to sharing knowledge
through dozens of meetings, exclusive cinema reviews, advanced training workshops,
original artistic and cultural events - declares Alberto Nerazzini, investigative journalist and President of Dig-. Dig confirms the support for investigative journalism and the growth of its large community made up of authors, journalists and citizens who are not satisfied and want to be gold, that is, aware, informed, free and incorruptible, just as Matteo Scanni, co-founder and president, friend urged fraternal and traveling companion who left us too soon, without leaving us alone. We obviously dedicate the necessary and ambitious program of the eighth edition to lu i ".
“Dig Festival represents one of the most important events in the cultural scene of Modena and beyond - comments Andrea Bortolamasi, councilor for culture of the Municipality who has strongly supported the project since 2020 together with the Modena Foundation and the Region Emilia Romagna . “Dig is courage, participation, civic commitment: we want to ensure that it grows and develops more and more in Modena, which is now the city of festivals”.
The festival will kick off with the inauguration of the solo exhibition of the acclaimed artist Gabriella Giandelli, author of the 2022 edition of the Watchdog, the "watchdog" symbol of investigative journalism and of every edition of Dig . Afterwards, the inaugural lectio by Maria Nadotti, essayist and translator, will officially open the Festival in the setting of the Church of San Carlo.
During "Dig Festival 2022: Stay Gold" we will talk about conflicts, propaganda and journalism, of the great crises of our time, of technological authoritarianism. An edition dedicated to the memory of Matteo Scanni - journalist, documentary maker, for a long time director of the School of Journalism of the Catholic University - who died prematurely on January 27: Stay Gold, "stay gold", was in fact the invitation with which he loved to encourage young journalists to remain incorruptible and to continue to seek the truth without compromising.
Danish investigative documentary maker Mads Brügger, a true icon of undercover journalism, will also participate; Irish reporter Sally Hayden, winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize with her My Fourth Time, We Drowned, on human trafficking in Libya; Avi Mograbi, the documentary maker who, with his works, was able to tell better than anyone else about Israel's occupation policy in the Gaza Strip. There will also be prominent exponents of several key realities of the most innovative investigative journalism: Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture, which with their investigation techniques have been able to reveal abuses and war crimes in conflict zones, recently also in the Ukrainian context. The NGO Privacy International, on the other hand, will enrich Dig's program with reflections on the authoritarian use of technology against journalism and migrants.
Dig is also cinema and great documentaries: for four days in the halls of the historic Cinema Astra, the finalist films in the five categories of the Dig Awards, in the presence of the authors who will reach Modena from all over the world. In addition to the titles in competition, the festival presents, as every year, a rich section of extra films: the reviews dedicated to the work of Mograbi and Brügger stand out.
The Festival will, as always, also host the sessions of the Dig Academy, with which Dig offers 12 free high-level training workshops, open to all and accredited by the Order of Journalists, hosted inside the San Paolo complex and in the Department of Law of the University of Modena. Furthermore, during Dig Festival, the international prizes of the Dig Awards will be awarded - the competition that this year attracted a record attendance, with over 400 entries submitted from all over the world. The prizes will be awarded by Dig's international jury, which features authors and producers of the world's leading investigative journalism and documentary brands, including Al Jazeera, Arte, Svt, Bbc and Fremantle. More and more space will be given to the audio category, with a jury made up of members of absolute prestige including Susanne Reber and Matteo Caccia, who will also be the protagonists of panels dedicated to podcasts. The full program of the 2022 edition will be unveiled starting in the coming weeks on the dig-awards.org website and on Dig's social channels.
