DIG Festival 2024: 'J'accuse'. is about to begin. A programme not to be missed, with over 100 speakers, for the tenth edition of Europe's most important festival dedicated to investigative and reportage journalism. In this guide we help you navigate through the DIG Talk proposed by our programme, always free of charge and with free admission (subject to availability).
The full programme is available here.
Wednesday and Thursday: two major special events in the Church of San Carlo
The DIG Talk calendar opens as early as Wednesday 18 September with “The Blow. Meeting with magistrate Nino Di Matteo”.”, a special event dedicated to the relations between politics, justice and information in Italy. The anti-mafia magistrate Nino Di Matteo will dialogue in the Church of San Carlo with Saverio Lodato, one of the journalists who most contributed to writing the history of Cosa Nostra and Alberto Nerazzini, investigative journalist and President of DIG. On Thursday 19, at 7 p.m., again in the Church of San Carlo, Francesca Albanese and Christian Elias will officially open the festival with their lectio «J'Accuse» inspired by the book on the genocide in Palestine that they wrote together under the same title. Perfect opportunity to introduce the title of the tenth edition of the festivalJ'Accuse.
Friday: foreign affairs, technology criticism and the novel of the year
On Friday, foreign affairs will be discussed together with some of the most respected journalists in this field: Nancy Porsia, Laura Silvia Battaglia, Giuliano Battiston and Laura Cappon talk about the turmoil in the Arab world in the talk “From Jasmine to Dhaka. The red thread of revolution”. Space for technology and its criticism with Valerio Bassan, journalist and author of “Rebooting the System. How we broke the Internet and why it is our turn to fix it” (Chiarelettere, 2024) and Tiziana Terranova, author and academic, whose latest book “After the Internet” (NERO, 2024) takes stock of the Internet crisis and what has, perhaps, already replaced it. The panel “Reboot the Internet! The network is broken, can we still fix it?” will seek to understand whether it is possible to return to a human-scale Internet. Later, it will instead discuss digital power and how journalists, activists and workers are implementing forms of resistance to algorithms around the world. This is the focus of “Resisting the power of algorithms”, event opened by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Angwin and complemented by a panel discussion with researchers Tiziano Bonini and Philip Di Salvo, the visual artist Salvatore Vitale and the journalist Sylke Gruhnwald. Space is also given to literature, with the presentation of the novel-memoir “Story of my life” of Janek Gorczyca, who will dialogue with Francesca Coin and Christian Raimo.
Saturday: the war in Gaza, protests around the world and the climate crisis
Two events dedicated to the war in Gaza are scheduled. The first, “Truth in the Crosshairs. The massacre of journalists in Gaza”.”, will recount the unpunished slaughter of journalists in the Strip since the beginning of the conflict, with Dr. Manisha Ganguly of The Guardian, Meron Rapoport of Israeli newspapers +927 and Local Call, Nour Abuzaid of Forensic Architecture, Safwat Kahlout, Palestinian journalist who fled Gaza. With “The Digital Oppression of Palestine. Surveillance and AI from Occupation to War”.” the focus will shift to the role of digital technologies in the conflict and occupation of Palestine. The event will be opened by a keynote by Mona Shtaya, a leading expert on digital issues in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Four events dedicated to climate: a first on greenwashing and the role of culture in fostering it in Italy with Laura Greco, Andrea Turco and Gianni Barbacetto; a second on the rights denied in the food chain in our country with Diletta Bellotti, Stefania Prandi and Stefano Liberti - that will also present his latest book - and one last on the most important and recent Italian investigations climate-themed with Silvia Lazzaris, Fabio Lo Verso, Marco Cortesi, Eva Pastorelli and Federico Sardo. Also not to be missed is the international panel dedicated to independent information with Gabriela Manuli (Global Investigative Journalism Network), Cecilia Anesi (IrpiMedia), Jake Hanrahan (Popular Front), Rivkah Brown (Novara Media) and Meron Rapoport. Hanrahan will also be one of the voices of “Squares, tear gas and hashtags. An atlas of protests around the world”, another international panel dedicated to the world in revolt in which academics will also participate Maria Chiara Franceschelli and Fernanda Odilla and journalists Constantin Simon and Leila Belhadj Mohamed. Also not to be missed is the conversation between the activist and author Eddi Marcucci and the writer Matteo Nucci on the theme of anger.
Sunday: prisons and rights, Ernest Hemingway and the new fascism
The last day of the talk opens with a panel discussion on the normalisation of the Italian extreme right, a topic that will be discussed by journalists who have recently investigated its rise, Andrea Palladino, Selena Frasson, Luigi Scarano and Giorgio Mottola. In the afternoon, Eddi Marcucci, Luigi Mastrodonato and Valentina Calderone, Guarantor for the rights of persons deprived of their liberty of Roma Capitale, will discuss the situation in Italian prisons. The panel will also be joined by Michele Rho and Nicola Zambelli, two directors who entered two prison facilities to tell the story of life within their walls in two documentaries, “Welcome to Jail” and “11 Days”, which will be screened in the evening at the Cinema Astra completing the discussion around this theme. At the San Carlo Theatre, however, will be staged the preview of “Away Days”, the new documentary series by Jake Hanrahan and Jonny Pickup which chronicles the slums of our world and the most extreme underground subcultures. The writer Matteo Nucci, instead, will tell us the Ernest Hemingway journalist, whose work as a chronicler is more influential than ever. Finally, the DIG venue will host the talk “The solution is class struggle”, with which Djarah Kan, Valentina Baronti, Eddi Marcucci and Francesca Coin will remind us what it would take to build a different political future.
DIG Festival 2024: «J'accuse» will also be there for the journalistic podcasts, with several dedicated events. On Saturday afternoon, to begin with, voice of the DIG Awards finalists in the “Audio” category with the talk “The art of audio enquiry. The authors of the Dig Awards 2024 podcasts talk”, moderated by Andrea De Cesco. On Sunday, however, the podcasters Francesca Zanni, Anna Dainelli and Dario De Santis will talk about recent podcasts that have redeemed the memory of otherwise forgotten people and facts.
New for DIG is the focus on the graphic journalism, to which the festival dedicates a rich programme of events spread over all the days. Two exhibitions: Gianluca Costantini's solo exhibition dedicated to the portraits of the journalists killed in Palestine and that of the best satirical cartoons of 2024, by the European Cartoon Award. Many thematic panels will be dedicated to cartoons and their role in the information ecosystem: Saturday will focus on journalistic cartoon story, of the risks taken by satirical cartoonists and the effectiveness of graphic journalism in recounting the present.
A unique event in Italy, however, is the Digital Security Clinic for DIG journalists. During this session - scheduled for Saturday - three experts from the use of AI will be available to the public for personalised and confidential advice in terms of digital security. A unique opportunity for those applying to secure their digital working tools. Finally, we would also like to remind you of the 12 free workshops of the DIG Academy, dedicated to topics fundamental to contemporary journalism, open to everyone, not just journalists. Three meetings a day, from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon. Among others, we will talk about local investigations, information design, data visualisation and cross-border reporting. We will talk about infosec, mental health of journalists, the use of AI and OSINT techniques. Discover all the details of the DIG Academy here.
