Juliette Lewis, Jon Voight and Ian Mckellen are among the guests who will attend next week's Giffoni Film Festival (July 19-26), one of the premier competitive events in the world dedicated to kids and youth-oriented cinema.

The festival will also welcome Italian directors Pupi Avati (The Heart Elsewhere), Paolo Virzi (My Name is Tanino) and multiple Karlovy Vary winner Ferzan Ozpetek (Facing Windows) as well as popular Roman actor Claudio Amendola.

However, while the actors and directors attending the festival will be meeting hordes of young fans in the small southern Italian town, they will not be included in any of Giffoni's four competition juries.

Instead, in pure festival tradition, awards will be voted on by around 1000 children from around the world who are invited to Giffoni.

Among the films included in the Free-to-Fly section, which is judged by 12-14 year-olds, are Chen Kaige's Together, which is based on a true story about a brilliant 13 year-old violinist who comes to Beijing with his father from their provincial city in search of a good music teacher, Paul Morrison's cricket comedy Wondrous Oblivion and New Zealand coming-of-age movie Whale Rider.

The First Screens section, judged by 8-12 year-olds, includes Philippe Muyl's French film Le Papillon (The Butterfly) which stars Michel Serrault. The other two competition strands, whose juries are made up of 6-9 year-olds and 15-19 year-olds, will screen among others Andrew Davis's Holes, featuring Jon Voight, and Israel's Oscar candidate Broken Wings.