David di Donatello, the ceremony with Mattarella and the candidates at the Quirinale. Geppi Cucciari hosts

" Culture and, in it, cinema, is capable of leaving traces beneath the surface. And therefore it can be a decisive tool, an ally of the freedom of individuals and communities in facing epochal change, in understanding it, and therefore living it without passively undergoing it. The awareness of one's roots and, together, the desire to innovate, to experiment with the new, are essential traits of cinema", said Mattarella. " A few years ago, it was feared that television, and then the web, the multiplication of platforms, would compress cinema, its language, its artistic and cultural role. Today we can see that cinema has won the challenge of interdependence or, if you like, of integration with other platforms, of "contamination" with other languages. It has developed new canons, invented new genres, has not remained the same, has been able to bring its narrative culture and the experience gained over the decades into a broader audiovisual system. This is a process that concerns the aesthetics of cinema, its narrative, but also the industrial part, from production to distribution, to the increasingly complex ways of fruition".

Cinema is "a sector that has an important and growing weight in the national economy. Also for this reason, while we appreciate the flourishing of new works - the David Award was born precisely for this, to encourage the dynamism of Italian production - we must also reflect on the open problems, identify the critical points of the system and find solutions that can help cinema overcome its difficulties". " This year too, it must be emphasized that movie theaters are suffering from a dangerous erosion that is taking them away from cities and neighborhoods. Objective circumstances penalize managers, but we cannot resign ourselves to commercial and market logics that do not take cinema into adequate consideration, also understood as a social value, as an opportunity to meet, to gather, to share. Institutions - both national and local - have the responsibility to govern these processes".

The awards ceremony will be held today, live in prime time on Rai1 starting at 9:40 pm, hosted by Elena Sofia Ricci and Mika.

(Online Union)