Competition Announcement
The rules for taking part in Booktrailer Film Festival
The rules for taking part in Booktrailer Film Festival
The BOOKTRAILER FILM FESTIVAL (BFF) is a project combining cinema, literature and the web. Since July 2026, the cultural association inPrimis has been responsible for its organization and financial management and owns the trademark.
It is supported and/or promoted by several organizations and institutions, including:
- Liceo Scientifico A. Calini in Brescia, its founder;
- the Faculty of Communication Sciences of John Paul II University in Krakow in collaboration with partner schools;
- Bulgarian schools and universities involved by Professor Nina Serkova
- Secondary School 192 “Hristo Botev” in Bistritsa, Sofia;
- the Croatian upper secondary school “Gimnazija Karlovac” in Karlovac;
- the Romanian upper secondary school “Colegiul National Spiru Haret” in Bucharest;
- the lower secondary school “Giosuè Carducci” in Brescia, which jointly manages the Booktrailer Film Festival Junior;
- Istituto Ven. A. Luzzago in Brescia;
- Accademia Laba in Brescia;
- national Fedic, Federation of Cineclubs, and its Fedic Scuola section;
- AGEnda Cinema, a Fedic cineclub in Brescia;
- Informagiovani and the Brescia Library Network, which provide educational spaces and training opportunities;
- as well as schools, libraries, institutional bodies, bookshops, associations, publishing houses, film and literary festivals, and websites promoting reading and cinema.
Conceived by Liceo Scientifico “A. Calini” in 2007, the Festival became European in 2016, at its tenth edition, within an Erasmus+ project. Since 2025 it has belonged to REFF, the Fedic Festival Network.
The BFF is a space for meeting and discussion about reading and ways of promoting it through the language of cinema and the web. It organizes meetings, presentations and workshops with professionals and experts in literature, cinema and publishing. Its aim is to extend the practice of the booktrailer—an audiovisual product that recreates a book and communicates its suggestions and images—as a tool to encourage reading and as an artistic-literary interpretation to be shared online and in cinemas.
The Festival’s official information channels are its multimedia and interactive platform, the connected Facebook and Instagram pages, and the official Festival newsletter.
An important part of the Festival is a competition for booktrailers independently produced by students from upper secondary schools and, since 2018–2019, also from lower secondary schools. The award ceremony will be held on 23 April 2027 in Brescia.
The commitment and creativity of lower and upper secondary school students are mobilized to create short videos aimed at spreading love and interest for books.
A national Jury of experts, for each participating country, selects the winners of the “Jury Prize” and awards prizes. By 6 April 2027, each national Jury may select up to three booktrailers to enter for a European prize awarded by a dedicated jury.
During the award ceremony, the winning booktrailer from each national section will be screened. Any additional booktrailers from partner countries, up to a maximum of three for each country, may be screened at the sole discretion of the Italian Jury.
An Italian BFF Junior Jury evaluates booktrailers from European lower and upper secondary schools.
An Accessibility Jury, composed of members of the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired, independently awards the prize to the most accessible booktrailer among those selected by the Italian Jury, the Junior Jury and, where applicable, the various national juries, with a maximum of three per country. The prize is sponsored by the Italian Union of the Blind.
A European Jury for upper secondary schools, consisting of one teacher and one student from each partner school and chaired by the President of the Italian Jury, awards a prize to the best European booktrailer chosen from the three submitted by each country.
A Scientific Committee, composed of distinguished representatives from different fields such as cinema, literature, art, music and advertising, guarantees the cultural quality of the initiative.
Individual students, groups of students, including students from different schools, or entire classes from lower and upper secondary schools may participate in the BFF Competition.
Students must upload their booktrailers to the Festival platform from 1 December 2026 until 11:50 p.m. on 2 March 2027, in the respective sections reserved for lower and upper secondary schools.
The choice of the book to reinterpret is free. Booktrailers must be unpublished and must not have been published elsewhere before the final award ceremony. Registration for the competition is free of charge.
Registering a user profile on the platform, which is necessary to enter the competition, does not necessarily imply participation in the competition.
Authors wishing to enter the competition must access YouTube, create a YouTube channel using their personal account, upload the booktrailer as “Unlisted”, add English subtitles using YouTube’s subtitle function, save the video link, access the BFF platform and create a personal account if they have not already done so, complete the registration form accurately in all its parts, and attach the full YouTube link in the appropriate section of the platform.
Contestants are responsible for any errors in completing the form and uploading materials. The BFF staff is not required to check for or report errors. Once the registration form has been completed and the application submitted, it will not be permitted or possible in any way to modify the information entered, even if it is clearly incorrect.
Each student may submit one booktrailer. In the case of a collective work, participants may submit only one additional booktrailer, either individually or in other groups. For group or class works, all co-authors’ names must be entered during registration.
All instructions concerning copyright infringement are available on the website. The use of AI is permitted and must be precisely indicated in the credits. The authors of the booktrailers are solely responsible for any possible infringement.
Participants should check the “news” section of the platform to verify whether there have been any changes to the registration procedure.
Although the choice of the book to reinterpret is free, the booktrailer must be unpublished and the result of autonomous work by the student or students; have a title corresponding to that of the book; last no longer than one and a half minutes, including credits; contain no material subject to copyright and/or intellectual property rights held by third parties; not be made public before the Juries announce the winners; be in any language, Italian or foreign, but include English subtitles that can be shown or hidden by the viewer and incorporated into the video according to YouTube upload procedures; and include credits in the national language and in English.
The credits, which may also be creatively designed, must include the book cover, the BFF and Fedic Scuola logos, the names of the participants and their roles, the name of the school, city, Italian region and country, the name and origin of any music tracks used, and the source of any other images, such as photographs or original videos. Booktrailers that do not meet these requirements may not be admitted to the competition.
The competition reserved for upper secondary schools includes separate prizes awarded at the sole discretion of the various juries: an Italian Jury prize, an Accessibility Jury prize, prizes awarded by the national Juries independently established by partner schools, a Junior Jury prize, a European Jury prize, and an online audience prize resulting from online voting open to users on the platform from 9 April until 11:50 p.m. on 16 April 2027.
The competition reserved for lower secondary schools, only for Italian schools, includes a prize awarded by the lower secondary school Jury during the award ceremony on 23 April 2027. The four best booktrailers selected by the same Jury will compete, together with those selected by the Italian Jury and any others selected by national Juries, for the Accessibility prize.
The Italian and European prizes will be announced on 23 April 2027 in Brescia, the seat of the Festival, during the award ceremony and in the presence of a guest of honour, whose name will be communicated through the press, the platform, Facebook, Instagram and the newsletter. In the following days, prizes and reasons for the awards will be published on the website. National prizes will be announced by the respective Juries according to the procedures chosen by each Jury.
The Italian Jury for lower secondary schools, which will meet on 6 April 2027 at 3 p.m., will evaluate the booktrailers and award a prize to the first-place work, which will be announced. Special mentions may also be awarded.
The Italian Jury for upper secondary schools, which will meet on 6 April 2027 at 3 p.m., will evaluate the booktrailers and award a single cash prize of 1,000 euros and a plaque. Any special mentions and/or awards for specific merits may also be decided.
Because the Festival places particular emphasis on accessibility, the Accessibility Jury will award a prize to the booktrailer that proves most accessible to blind or visually impaired people, among those selected by the Italian juries and by the European juries involved in the evaluation. The prize is supported by the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Brescia and consists of 200 euros. Each national jury may send up to three booktrailers from among its finalists to compete for the Accessibility prize. The Accessibility Jury will meet on a date agreed by its members, after the Italian Jury and at least ten days before the award ceremony.
The online audience prize will be awarded during the same award ceremony as the result of online voting from 9 April until 11:50 p.m. on 16 April 2027, and will include all booktrailers entered in the competition. The prize consists of a 200-euro voucher for the purchase of books and audiobooks from the publishing house il Narratore.
The European Jury, composed of one teacher and one student from each European partner school, chaired by the President of the Italian Jury and with the participation of a language mediator, will operate exclusively online, selecting the winner of the European Prize from a maximum of three booktrailers per partner country indicated by the respective national Juries for booktrailers produced in European upper secondary schools. It will meet online on 13 April 2027.
The Juries designate the winners and select the booktrailers to be screened at any respective festivals, in full autonomy and at their sole discretion, on the basis of the following criteria: clarity, understood as communicative competence; originality, understood as creative competence; ability to use technologies, understood as cinematic and digital competence; literary understanding and interpretation of the text, understood as literary competence; and completeness of the product and of the resources used, understood as organizational completeness.
All prizes, except for the audience prize, are accompanied by a written statement of reasons, which is made public during the award ceremony and published on the website.
Registration for the Festival implies unconditional acceptance of this Call for Entries. The school and the authors undertake to guarantee the existence of individual releases issued in accordance with the law by the parents of each minor participating in the competition, authorizing the unrestricted dissemination of footage involving the minors, and also undertake to produce such declarations upon simple request by the Festival organization.
The Festival is responsible for the schedule and times of screenings. The booktrailers received will become part of the BFF archive for teaching and study purposes.
The BFF reserves the right to place the booktrailers online and/or use them without paying any rights, solely for cultural and non-profit purposes, in Italy and abroad, without time limits. Whoever enters the film in the competition is responsible for being legitimately authorized to do so.
The BFF may make decisions concerning matters not provided for in this Call for Entries. The BFF invites contestants to share their booktrailers online, through the most appropriate channels, after the award ceremony and after they have been uploaded to the website for public viewing.
The works selected for the Competition will also be published online, without any commercial purpose, on the BFF platform, on the Facebook page and on the Instagram channel, in connection with the websites of the partner schools and organizing bodies.
All rights relating to the work are owned by the authors. The authors of the booktrailers are responsible for any infringement of property rights arising from the use of images, sounds or films. For any dispute, the Court of Brescia shall have jurisdiction.
Email from all countries: info@booktrailerfilmfestival.eu. Please specify in the communication whether you belong to a lower or upper secondary school.
The President of the cultural association inPrimis
Francesco Zambelli
The Scientific Director of the BFF
Laura Forcella Iascone
