If they did not exist, we would have to re-invent them

Festivals are the decentralised and irreplaceable spaces for imagining the unimaginable. Welcome to Trieste.

The Trieste Film Festival in northern Italy has grown alongside and within a city sitting close to the border between Italy and Slovenia - never a place of stable meanings for those born and negotiating their lives in the vicinity, or even for those simply passing through.

You might remember the week I was there. As I watched a festival film called Germa…