Supremacy of the “cousins” this year at the Rome Independent Film Festival: France and Spain leading with 7 films in competition, followed by Italy with 5 selected works out of the national category. Opening the festival (out of competition) is in fact a co-production by Spain, Italy, Germany and Chile: “The Future”, by Alicia Scherson, with Nicolas Vaporidis. Spain shines for “Fenix 11.23”, feature film by Joan and Sergi Lara; documentaries “Little World”, “Mapa”, and “The Red Carpet”; amongst the short films are “That wasn’t me” and the experimental “This Leak”. From France there is “Ombline” as feature film, and “216 mois”, “Le dernier jour de l’hiver” and “The Belly Strike” as short films. Italy competes with the short films: “Ce l’hai un minuto”, “Erogatore”, “Fratelli minori”, “Giocodimare”, “Il fischietto”, “Il violinista”, “La storia di Sonia”, “L’uomo della faccia di ladro”, “Matilde”, “Miriam”, “Regina bianca”, “Segreti”, “Seguimi”, and also “Sotto il Cellophane”, “Il mondo sopra la testa”, and “The Spark”. For feature films instead, Italy runs with “Aquadro”, “Carta bianca”, “Le formiche della città morta”, “Lost In Laos”, “L’ultima foglia”, “Spaghetti Story”, and “Transeurope Hotel”. On the other hand, selected as documentaries for DocumentaRIFF are: “Autobiografia dell’università Italiana”, “Buracos – L’eredità del diamante”, “Con quella faccia da straniera – Il viaggio di Maria Occhpinti”, “Eros”, “MayDay (Mede’)”, “Slot. Le intermittenti luci di Franco”, “Suicidio Italia”, “The Silent Chaos”, “The valley of the Jato” and finally “Indistruttibile oggetto”, and “What about Alice?” for experimental films made in Italy. Five are the U.S.A films in competition: “Two Hundred Thousand Dirty” (feature film), “The Suffering Grasses” (documentary), “Love Story” (international short films),  “The spaghetti storm” (student films), “Addictions” (experimental films). Four instead for Germany: “Fruit Flies”, “Waldesruh” (international short films), “The Last Border” (student films); “20zwoelf” (experimental films). Three competing films from Israel and Poland, two from United Kingdom, Belgium, Cyprus, Brazil and Switzerland. Only one, but unique films from Austria, Australia, Japan, India, Slovakia, Lebanon, Canada, Kosovo, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Norway, Colombia, and Chile for a total of 26 nations.