Czech Film Center

The International Yasujiro Ozu Film Festival was born eighteen years ago by the Cultural Association Fahrenheit 451 of Sassuolo (Italy). It has since grown beyond our expectations. Every year, more than 500 authors from Italy or abroad apply for participation in the festival. Through the years, the event, which is ticket free, has established itself as a capital event among cinema fans of all kinds of public.
The Ozu was born in 1993 thanks to the intuition of a few cinema fans particularly fond of the work of the Japanese Maestro, Yasujiro Ozu, whom the festival was named after. The first editions were restricted on a local and mostly amateur level, before gradually reaching a national and then international scale. The quality of the participating films has also considerably increased. Artists such as Franca Rame, Marco Paolini, Carla Signoris and Dino Abbrescia have taken part in the event, while of particular interest have been the participations of the songwriter Lucio Dalla and the football star Fabio Cannavaro. Nevertheless, the festival is still more interested in rewarding original ideas rather than big budget or technical perfection.
Nowadays, having reached majority, the festival collaborates with media professionals like the members of the Association “Il Sassolino”, that is now official partner of the festival.