As indicated in the festival regulations, only young people who already frequent Salesian works, or the Salesian Family, were able to participate in DBGYFF 2023: a particular choice, certainly not aimed at excluding anyone but rather at enhancing the contribution that young people who already know and love the charism of Don Bosco can make.

Despite a more selected target group, the response of young people was also very high: by 15 August, the last date to submit a video, 540 works were submitted, made by young people from over 40 countries around the world.

Once the collection of the candidate videos was completed, the first level juries, the regional ones, got underway; thanks to the solid online platform developed for DBGYFF 2023, the juries, always operating in digital mode, each viewed the short films from their region and expressed their evaluations according to criteria of competence and reliability – each video was viewed by at least three different people, precisely to ensure independence and variety of judgement.

"So far we have seen a colourful collection of valuable, beautiful, different videos, each capable of expressing its own sensitivity, yet always fresh and touching. There are the faces of the continents of the world in these short films, the smiles, sweat and tears, but above all the aspirations and dreams of our young people, and above all their way of conceiving how it is possible to build peace and solidarity through love. It was truly a moving experience to be able to witness such a wonderful spectacle", commented the Director of DBGYFF 2023, Fr Harris Pakkam.

Thanks to the self-sacrifice of the members of the regional juries, a first, twofold result was therefore achieved: of the 540 videos, the 52 best were selected globally, which will all be screened and compete for the top spots on the final days of the festival; in addition, each regional jury was also able to draw up its own internal ranking, and choose the short films that deserve to win the regional prizes in accordance with the global quality criteria.

"The most interesting thing about this second edition of the DBGYFF, which I am pleased to announce here, is that the final phase of the festival, the one that will take place all over the world simultaneously in various locations between Friday 13 and Saturday 14 October 2023, will have its epicenter in Los Angeles, at the foot of the Hollywood hills. This is intended to be a way to bring the colour and vision of the world of young people in Salesian circles to the heart of the film industry", the General Councillor for Social Communication, Fr Gildasio Mendes, announced.

This significant innovation will be made possible thanks to the availability of the Don Bosco Youth Centercommunity in Los Angeles, which will host the official award ceremony of the short films on Friday 13th at 6 pm local time (UTC-8). The event will see the valuable collaboration of the different educational and communicative activities of the Salesians in the Los Angeles area and the United States West (SUO) Province in general.

In the same way, the Sector for Social Communication renews its invitation to all Salesians and members of the Salesian Family, lay collaborators and to all those who accompany young people in the style of Don Bosco not to miss the opportunity of DBGYFF 2023 to accompany boys and girls from all over the world. On 13-14 October, and also thereafter, the festival will be an excellent opportunity to listen to young people, to be inspired by their ideas, as well as to have fun together with them, and that is why it will be important to accompany the various local realisations of the festival, through an appropriate organisation of the screening days.

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