The Italian Film Festival USA believes that the audience's judgment of films is very important. Thus, we provide our spectators with a ballot before each film where they rate the feature films from 1 to 5 stars (5 being the highest). After the film screening, the ballots are collected and an average rating is calculated. At the conclusion of the festival, the film with the highest score is announced as winner of the Best Feature Film Award.

The spectators select the best short film presented in the Short Film Program.