The Festival is organized by Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo in cooperation with the Progetto Culturale of Italian Bishops Congress, the Vatican Councils for Culture and Social Communications, and it has been presenting for the last ten years a double path on spiritual issues and facing the Other. Festival's history begins in 1997 when Pope Giovanni Paolo II blessed and opened the first edition of the former Festival del Cinema Spirituale Tertio Millennio. The festival showed from its very beginning its special interest in an advanced film deepening drawing close to the film screeenings two personal tributes: one to Wim Wenders, tracing his cinema throughout a theological overview, the other to Robert Bresson, met and interviewd just on the occasion of the omage. In the following editions the Festival confirmed and consolidated its thoughtful identity, composing paths and analysis by film exhibitions and a specific film studies (such as: Giovanna d'arco sullo schermo, in 2001, and Cristo nel cinema, in 2003). Some of the greatest film critics and lecturer have been taking part to the studying and screening sessions; Festival awarded the best directors in contemporary cinema (such as Theo Anghelopoulos or Alexander Sokurov) In 2004 Dario E. Vigaṇ, President of Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo, became the Director of the Festival. In 2005 the Festival opened a new mexican window in Guadalajara, and in the following year (2006) a slovenian one in Ljubljana. The 2008 edition, the 12th one, inaugurated the brand new Tertio Millennio Film Fest and the birth of Tertio Millennio Film Fest Salento