SUNS EUROPE is the European festival of performing arts in minoritized languages. Started in 2009 as a music contest for minority communities in Alpine-Mediterranean Europe, the festival has now developed into a place of encounter and exchange between artists of minoritized language groups in Europe.
Sounds (“suns” in Friulian), but also cinema and literary works that become expressions of existing and resisting identities through visions and words. It is no coincidence that SUNS Europe started in Udine, Friuli, the multilingual heart of Europe: here, Radio Onde Furlane has been broadcasting music and culture programmes mostly in Friulian since the 1980s and his now the soul of the festival. ARLeF, the Regional Agency for Friulian language, immediately believed in the project, so as to have transformed it into an international event and a hotbed of ideas, artistic influences and creativity.
Every year SUNS Europe awards a prize to the best artistic productions in minority languages of the continent. Our goal is to give them a contemporary vibe, without excessive nostalgia or sentimentalism: languages are lively and vibrant expressions of culture, not folklore. For a Europe that is really united in its diversity. For a Europe that is finally real.