The announcement was made to excited response on the Newcastle Italian Film Festival Facebook page, with promises to reveal more details soon.
It’s the first event since last year’s successful festival, which officially raised $14,000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association NSW.
Films in the late-2018 festival included award-winning comedy It’s The Law, mafia film Suburra, comedy Ignorance is Bliss, Seadreaming Girls, Daughter of Mine, From Naples With Love and the classic Life is Beautiful.
The festival was co-founded by friends Nick Moretti and Dino Cesta in 2010, as a way of reconnecting with the culture of their immigrant parents, who settled in Newcastle.
“It’s about bringing people together,” Moretti told the Newcastle Herald.
Sadly, Cesta passed away in 2015, a victim of motor neurone disease, a terminal condition in which the nerve cells controlling the muscles that enable us to move, speak, breathe and swallow undergo degeneration and die.
Cesta was looked after until the end by his wife Anna, who passed away last year following her own long battle with breast cancer.
The Dino and Anna Cesta Memorial Scholarship was founded in 2018 in honour of the couple, and last year was awarded to Alison, a student from the Newcastle area who is studying a film-related degree.
