The names of the winners of the 58th edition of the “Istria Nobilissima” Art and Culture Competition, the historic cultural event organised by the'Italian Union of Fiume and the People's University of Trieste, Established to enhance and promote the artistic and literary production in Italian of the Italian National Community of Istria and Kvarner. Over the years, the competition has recognized not only young talents but also some of the most renowned names in the Italian National Community's artistic and literary scene, authors who have gone on to publish numerous books or hold significant local and international exhibitions. Each year, the competition recognizes works in literature, visual arts, theater, music, film, and journalism, offering space to both established authors and emerging talents.

This year's winners also include competition veterans such as Giacomo Sscotti, Bruno Bontempo, Mario Simonovich, Tiziana Dabović, Roberta Dubac, Libero Benussi, Tea Paškov, Mauro Stipanov, Bruno Paladin, Egon Hreljanović, Irene Mestrovich, Kenka Legović, Doriana Segnan, and Dario Saftich.

PRIZES AWARDED

A) Literature Category – OSVALDO RAMOUS Award

1. POETRY IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE

First prize: ROSANNA BUBOLA
Title: The point
Motivation: essential and rapid verses that capture inexorable images with acute sensitivity.

Second prize: GIACOMO SCOTTI
Title: The days pass by the sea
Motivation: the serene bitterness of a prolonged farewell extends to veil the affections that bind the poet to places and people with balanced and sincere verses.

Honorable Mention: IVAN PAVLOV
Title: Recalibrating the Astrolabe: A Spiritual Cosmography of the Self

YOUTH AWARD Category

Adelia Biasiol Award: VITA ČEKIĆ
Title: Goodbyes that taste like love
Motivation: the emotional toil of loss lightened by rhymed and rhythmic verses in an architecture rich in metaphors.
Mentors: Professor Romina Floris

Honorable Mention: LANA VERDNIK
Title: My screams
Mentors: Prof. Sandro Manzin

2. POETRY IN ONE OF THE DIALECTS OF THE ITALIAN NATIONAL COMMUNITY

First prize: TIZIANA DABOVIĆ
Title: emotions
Motivation: rapid frescoes of vital and contrasting feelings and memories, expressed by a language sensitively composed in balanced verses.

Second prize: GIANNA MAZZIERI-SANKOVIĆ
Title: The scent of you
Motivation: A gallery of portraits narrated with stylistic coherence in verses tending towards the prosaic; youthful affections conveyed by the faces of adults who have taught.

3. PROSE IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE

First prize: ROBERTA DUBAC
Title: All the adage in the world
Motivation: The process of mourning the loss of a loved one, a blend of furious disbelief and serene abandonment; the writing is fluid, balanced, and narratively effective.

Second prize: FLORINDA KLEVISSER
Title: Olga's Return
Motivation: a story of enchanting originality and constructed with confident narrative ability.

Honorable Mention: MARIO SIMONVICH
Title: Attila's Cemetery

4. PROSE IN ONE OF THE DIALECTS OF THE ITALIAN NATIONAL COMMUNITY

Second prize: BRUNO BONTEMPO
Title: The Silk Road
Motivation: amusing fresco of a multi-ethnic condominium, fluent and accurate dialect writing.

YOUTH AWARD Category

Honorable Mention: NIKO LOVRIĆ
Title: Scaruòcio
Mentors: Prof. Sandro Manzin

5. ESSAYS ON HUMANISTIC OR SCIENTIFIC TOPICS

Second prize: FREE BENUSSI
Title: The lemmas of the Rovinj dialect lexical baggage not yet catalogued
Motivation: cataloguing work conducted with satisfactory scientific criteria.

Honorable Mention: FEDERICO ŠURAN
Title: Georg Ritter von Trapp, a hero of times gone by

6. CHILDREN'S AND YOUTH LITERATURE IN ITALIAN

First prize: STELLA DEFRANZA
Title: River under the protective wing
Motivation: fairy-tale invention of the story of the double-headed eagle, narratively well-structured.

Second prize: ANITA PRIBANIĆ
Title: Didi and her new friend
Motivation: Encountering dyslexia in a compassionate and supportive school setting; an account of a likely real and certainly uplifting experience.

B) Theater Category – RANIERO BRUMINI Award

1. THEATRICAL TEXTS

No prizes were awarded.

YOUTH AWARD Category

Honorable Mention: RAFAEL VIŽINTIN
Title: (ABNORMAL

C) Visual Arts Category – ROMOLO VENUCCI Award

1. PAINTING, SCULPTURE, GRAPHICS

First prize: MAURO STIPANOV
Title: Pulsar 9
Motivation: The work reveals the author's long journey of research through the stratification of brushstrokes that define an evanescent and rarefied atmosphere.

Second prize: TEA PAŠKOV VUKOJEVIĆ
Title: Connection
Motivation: The painting uses a measured technique, based on the combination of lines and material surfaces, which seem to recall the map of a winter landscape seen from above.

Honorable Mention: KLAUDIO KATUNAR
Title: While waiting

Honorable Mention: IRENE MESTROVICH
Title: Dance and it will pass

2. DESIGN, APPLIED ARTS, ILLUSTRATION

First prize: BRUNO PALADIN
Title: Geoplan C
Motivation: The artist reproduces through his unmistakable style signs that recall Glagolitic letters and other scripts and graphemes from the history of civilization.

Second prize: EX EQUO – IVNA SAFUNDŽIĆ AND ELDA ČEKADA
Title: Aladdin (Ivna Safundžić) and In Blue (Elda Čekada)
Motivation: Technical research, formal solutions that in their distinctiveness manage to convey harmonious sensations

3. PHOTOGRAPHY

First prize: JERKO GUDAC
Title: Palm pipe
Motivation: Series of black and white photographs that confirm the profound perception of space through graphemes that radially were abstract compositional effects.

Second prize: EGON HRELJANOVIĆ
Title: Game of colors
Motivation: Photos that look like painted games, aesthetically pleasing, which demonstrate mastery of technique and a good sense of framing.

YOUTH AWARD Category

Adelia Biasiol Award: IVANA VILKE
Title: Senza titolo
Motivation: Young poetic soul, photographic composition with bright and joyful colors.

D) Category Cinema, Documentaries and Television

1. CINEMATIC ART, DOCUMENTARIES AND TELEVISION

First prize: GIULIA DUSSICH
Title: Shadow
Motivation:
Ombre is a masterful work that reveals the artist's approach to developing her visual and cinematic language. Starting from a seemingly simple theme—legend—the artist draws on mythology and collective memory, oral traditions, and popular beliefs. The shadow is the central theme: mysterious, esoteric. This gives rise to a profoundly subjective perception, a contemporary reinterpretation of myth. The work is based on a powerful and dominant concept that foregrounds a mythical creature, stripping it bare through cinematic and experimental processes to transform it into a poetic testimony of a civilization perhaps long forgotten, yet seemingly yet to come: like a glimmer of a paradoxically optimistic apocalypse.

YOUTH AWARD Category

Adelia Biasiol Award: ENDY RAMANI
Title: The story of those left behind – an emotion that never ceases to exist
Motivation:

With an ironic and allegorical tone, the author tells a story of cultural and family heritage. It is a deeply personal portrait of an era, which for him becomes a reference and measure of different times: times of transition and challenge, of growth and sacrifice. Symbolic values ​​are delineated that have helped shape periods different from the one the author humorously discusses today, drawing on his own memories. It is striking how young people cherish the memory of their loved ones and allow these very figures to inspire them, through history, towards a different and more uncertain future.
Mentors: Professor Larisa Degobbis

Honorable Mention: LETIZIA SIRONIĆ
Title: Greetings from Pula
Motivation:

The author innovatively represents the relationship between different temporal dimensions. Her interplay with media and the way she intertwines past and present are particularly interesting. The work emerges as a sensitive reflection on the surrounding landscape and the history it carries: a beautiful example of reinterpreting historical sites in a dialogue between "as it was" and "as it is" today.

E) Music Category – LUIGI DALLAPICCOLA Award

1. INSTRUMENTAL, VOCAL OR CHORAL PERFORMANCE

Second prize: CHIARA JURIĆ BOŽAC
Motivation: For the seriousness of the execution and the difficulty of the program presented.

Honorable Mention: CHOIR ABBEY VOICES
Motivation: For the freshness of execution and team spirit

YOUTH AWARD Category

Honorable Mention: VERONIKA TANKOVIĆ

F) Category Citizens resident in other countries, of Istrian, Istrian-
Kvarner and Dalmatian certified by a specific document

1. NARRATIVE PROSE AND POETRY, ALSO IN DIALECT, ON THEMES THAT
THEY ARE OF INTEREST TO THE COMMON ISTRIAN, ISTRO-QUARNERINO AND
DALMATIAN, IN ITS BROADEST CULTURAL, HUMAN AND
HISTORICAL

First prize: KENKA LEKOVICH
Title: Fourth eccentric
Motivation: Four texts on various subjects of refined linguistic invention and critical and creative provocation (the third in particular is a meditation on poetics and linguistic creation).

Second prize: DORIANA SEGNAN
Title: “Survival” – (Survival) America, from the album 'Alibi', 1980
Motivation: Simple structure of flat narrative sequences that express fluctuating historical and emotional situations.

“PAOLO LETTIS” JOURNALISM AWARD

The commission awards the Journalism Prize to ALESSANDRA ARGENTI TREMUL
for the documentary aired on TV Capodistria and titled “Devotees of Saint Nazario” to
the following motivation:
In-depth and engaging, Alessandra Argenti Tremul's work expresses thematic knowledge and closeness to her roots and her historical-cultural heritage. Carefully crafted in its images, text, and music, it is characterized by a hint of spirituality that emerges even
In the numerous interventions that, between memories of the past and everyday life, describe the figure of Saint Nazarius. Produced on the occasion of the 1500th anniversary of his consecration as Bishop of Justinopoli, the documentary, in addition to highlighting the figure of the Patron Saint of Koper, recounts the turmoil of the 900th century and identifies the desire for reconciliation among the peoples of this land.

The commission assigns the Lifetime Achievement Award a DARIO SAFTICH with the following motivation:
A renowned journalist, particularly in the field of journalism related to the Italian national community in Croatia and Slovenia, Dario Saftich has always been a precise and informed witness. A journalist and political commentator for the daily newspaper "La Voce del Popolo" and a contributor to Radio and TV Capodistria, throughout his career he has consistently and objectively analyzed the history, politics, and social changes that have shaped Croatia and Slovenia, with a focus on Rijeka and Istria and the cultural identity of the Italian community.

He has previously won the Paolo Lettis Journalism Award several times, honoring those who report on the reality of the Italian National Community in the eastern Adriatic borderlands. This lifetime achievement award comes upon his retirement and is a testament to the commitment, dedication, responsibility, and expertise he has demonstrated throughout his professional career.